Civ Specific Great Historians

[Leoreth]

I think it would be cool if great historians ("the great historian Tacitus has compiled a list of the world's wealthiest civilisations") were civ and era specific. They can sometimes feel a little out of place and it would be great if this little piece would tie in with the overall civ and era specific feel of the mod.

I don't have the time to compile these lists for all civs though, so it would help a lot if you could help me find them.

We can use the existing great people code for this as well (even though they are not "great people" in the actual game sense). I don't think there need to be that many for each civ because these popups occur quite rarely. And yes, we can reuse names already recognised as Great Statesmen (or any other great person type) without problems.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Steb]

That's a cool idea. Do you think there should be 1 historian per combination of civ + era? Or multiple names to pick from like regular great people?

 

[Leoreth]

I would just go by which historians are most prominent and important. They most likely cluster around the time where the civ was prominent, but that's fine. I'd rather have too many in one era than forcing one for each era. Would be a shame to lose all but classical Roman historian when we can have five.

The logic is already built to accomodate that, e.g. when an era lacks a name the adjacent eras are used, if there are many one will be picked randomly etc.

 

[Strijder21]

I think it would be cool if great historians ("the great historian Tacitus has compiled a list of the world's wealthiest civilisations") were civ and era specific. They can sometimes feel a little out of place and it would be great if this little piece would tie in with the overall civ and era specific feel of the mod.

I don't have the time to compile these lists for all civs though, so it would help a lot if you could help me find them.

We can use the existing great people code for this as well (even though they are not "great people" in the actual game sense). I don't think there need to be that many for each civ because these popups occur quite rarely. And yes, we can reuse names already recognised as Great Statesmen (or any other great person type) without problems.

Thanks for the help.

Do you have a suggestion as to in which format this data should be gathered? Or can we just make a shared Google Docs file and make a table with name - Civilization - era and you'll transfer it into the game?

 

[Dracosolon]

The eras in question are still Ancient-Classical-Medieval-Renaissance-Industrial-Global-Digital, right? Do you have actual dates in mind for their ranges?

Also for the sake of nitpicking, I'm guessing the modern eras would favor historians of a more international scope rather than specialists of their own country's history?

 

[Leoreth]

Do you have a suggestion as to in which format this data should be gathered? Or can we just make a shared Google Docs file and make a table with name - Civilization - era and you'll transfer it into the game?

Both would be fine. I could prepare a way to add them to the GreatPeople.py file as well.

The eras in question are still Ancient-Classical-Medieval-Renaissance-Industrial-Global-Digital, right? Do you have actual dates in mind for their ranges?

It's the civ's current era, no date ranges apply. Please judge by the technological state of the civ while the person in question is alive.

Also for the sake of nitpicking, I'm guessing the modern eras would favor historians of a more international scope rather than specialists of their own country's history?

Sure, they can focus on whatever, what counts is the society they lived in. Gibbon covered the Roman Empire and many other cultures but he was still a great British historian.

 

[Strijder21]

All right, let's gather data in this document then, if that is fine with everyone:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wy_JOh2RmW_FVosNa7HTbQbO8b1RQWstb3Trug6imss/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Strijder21]

One thing that I wondered about is how strict we should be in our interpretation of 'Historians'? After all, these are people who are publishing 'lists' and 'rankings' of civilizations across the world - famous travellers might also fit the bill. This is why I included Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta also in the list, as it is quite literally what those people did.

 

[Leoreth]

I think these examples make sense in context, but let's hear what other people think.

 

[rmontaruli]

I filled some names i know for Rome and Italy.

 

[1SDANi]

Honestly, it'd be interesting if other countries' lists were distributed too. It's not like Greek literature stayed in Greece.

Heck if we wanted to really expand the mechanic, make it a small competition, give civs a temporary percent bonus to trade based on their ranking, and allow civs to bribe the great historians with gold or coerce them with espionage. Maybe even make great historians liable to overlook less culturally prominent civs and overestimate culturally prominent ones.

 

[Krieger-FS]

Is there any restrictions about alive great historians for Digital Age?

 

[Leoreth]

if anyone puts Niall Ferguson they'll be banned

 

[1SDANi]

if anyone puts Niall Ferguson they'll be banned

I'm not sure who's a worse historian, him, or Donald "American Revolution Airport Siege" Trump

 

[merijn_v1]

Can I put my uncle Barry on the list? He always has these great stories about the old days.

 

[rmontaruli]

I have a point of discussion.
A historian is somebody who studied the past, not the present.
So, it does not sound good if a historian compiles a list of civilizations of his present, he should do it for civilizations of his past.

Who compiles a list of his present is a chronicler, or a journalist. Doesn't he?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Does Noam Chomsky count?

 

[Leoreth]

He's a linguist.

 

[Dracosolon]

Plus he's more likely to release a list of the civilizations guilty of the worst war crimes rather than the largest or richest ones.

 

[brett0007]

I wouldn't have Gildas as a historian, he was a religious polemicist more concerned with castigating contemporary leaders for being bad Christians, his work is only valuable historically because it is the sole surviving contemporary accout of British politics from the time. Gildas is not a reliable source, but he is the only source we have from that time and it tells us a few tantalizing scraps.