Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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Flyingchicken, putting points in your society would lead to things like the invention of writing, calendars, more representative forms of government, etc.
Alternative Timeline Experiment
- Thread starter civver_764
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Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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Influence is more like how best you can spread your control over areas without revolts, etc from the way Civver has talked about it. I'd actually like some more clarification as well.
civver_764
Deity
Sorry I meant to get to this yesterday.
Political is like improving the efficiency of your government and moving towards more "modern" forms. Generally this allows for more centralization and stuff so that things are easier to manage, but it can also be used like Atlantis is doing to move towards a democracy, which has been helping his nationhood level increase.
Economy is pretty much anything to do with the distribution of resources in your country and how far you trade, etc. The better your economy the more people you can support.
Influence is like a peaceful way of gaining land.
Culture develops nationhood and also gets you the culture techs, which have a chance to lead to wonders.
Military increases the quality of your military, gets you military techs, and gets more people enlisted in your military.
Society is a lot like culture, in that it will increase your nationhood, except in different ways. It also can lead to different classes and stuff, such as merchant classes. More importantly it can usually lead to people accepting the rule of their leaders more, and of the customs you try to impose on them.
Political is like improving the efficiency of your government and moving towards more "modern" forms. Generally this allows for more centralization and stuff so that things are easier to manage, but it can also be used like Atlantis is doing to move towards a democracy, which has been helping his nationhood level increase.
Economy is pretty much anything to do with the distribution of resources in your country and how far you trade, etc. The better your economy the more people you can support.
Influence is like a peaceful way of gaining land.
Culture develops nationhood and also gets you the culture techs, which have a chance to lead to wonders.
Military increases the quality of your military, gets you military techs, and gets more people enlisted in your military.
Society is a lot like culture, in that it will increase your nationhood, except in different ways. It also can lead to different classes and stuff, such as merchant classes. More importantly it can usually lead to people accepting the rule of their leaders more, and of the customs you try to impose on them.
erez87
Lord of Random
When the collapse of the Bronze age and rise of the Iron age reaches the Greek areas can I be told?
Atlantis Orders
Atlantis
Population: 6(12,000 people)
Land Area: 0(0 km)
Military Power: 1
Economy: 3
Nationhood: 4
Technologies: Agriculture, Hunting, Fishing
Spending Points: 7
-3 into Economy. Lets start building roads and farms and an organized society.
-4 into Political. I would like to see for Atlantis a Roman Republic Style of Government start to form, although quite a bit more democratic
Atlantis
Population: 6(12,000 people)
Land Area: 0(0 km)
Military Power: 1
Economy: 3
Nationhood: 4
Technologies: Agriculture, Hunting, Fishing
Spending Points: 7
-3 into Economy. Lets start building roads and farms and an organized society.
-4 into Political. I would like to see for Atlantis a Roman Republic Style of Government start to form, although quite a bit more democratic
Name: Axiom
Location: Sicily
Urban Center: LOCATION: Messina. NAME: Aleak
Color: yellow-green
Culture: Mining, fishing and warfare are the specialties of this large collection of powerful families on both sides of the Strait of Messina. They've gained minor contorl over sea-based trade along the local coasts, and as such, they've gained influence over the other local families and tribes.
Political System: A proto-republic of sorts, for every 200 family members 1 representative is selected and given suggestions by the rest as to what should happen at the Council of Families anually held in Aleak, on the island of Sicily.
OOC: I probably have 2 points?
1 on Economy: Establish trade routes with the local tribes and families.
1 on Economy: Create further farms in the countryside and fishing ports on our coasts.
Location: Sicily
Urban Center: LOCATION: Messina. NAME: Aleak
Color: yellow-green
Culture: Mining, fishing and warfare are the specialties of this large collection of powerful families on both sides of the Strait of Messina. They've gained minor contorl over sea-based trade along the local coasts, and as such, they've gained influence over the other local families and tribes.
Political System: A proto-republic of sorts, for every 200 family members 1 representative is selected and given suggestions by the rest as to what should happen at the Council of Families anually held in Aleak, on the island of Sicily.
OOC: I probably have 2 points?
1 on Economy: Establish trade routes with the local tribes and families.
1 on Economy: Create further farms in the countryside and fishing ports on our coasts.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
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Too many people in Europe. You must all go to Mesopatamia -- Europe belongs to Albion 
Cobalt Command
Destroyer of Worlds
Everyone seems to think that because in OTL Europe was pretty significant, starting there at the dawn of civilization will make the same come true for some reason...
erez87
Lord of Random
It's the geography. There isn't an area like Greece anywhere else in the world for a city-states culture to develop and last...
Lord of Elves
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OTL Europe is significant to most of us because America has succeeded in spreading large aspects of western culture, and a cultural memory of western culture is... the west. Or, traditionally, Europe, which is why so many of us are starting there.
Also, compared to parts of the areas that humanity originated in, (Africa, Mesopatamia), Europe is an agricultural wonderland. Large parts of it are covered by rivers, the temperature does not vary dramatically, and rain is common without being destructive. There also isn't a huge variation in terrain, but for the Alps. It's generally the kind of place you'd expect civilization to be common, from a scientific standpoint. Conventional civilization began in Mesopatamia for the same reasons.
The great migrations that occurred, (if I recall), shortly before the bronze age were because many cultures began to starve out, and Europe was not only the most western point that many of them could reach, but it was also the most fertile land outside of Asia.
Also, compared to parts of the areas that humanity originated in, (Africa, Mesopatamia), Europe is an agricultural wonderland. Large parts of it are covered by rivers, the temperature does not vary dramatically, and rain is common without being destructive. There also isn't a huge variation in terrain, but for the Alps. It's generally the kind of place you'd expect civilization to be common, from a scientific standpoint. Conventional civilization began in Mesopatamia for the same reasons.
The great migrations that occurred, (if I recall), shortly before the bronze age were because many cultures began to starve out, and Europe was not only the most western point that many of them could reach, but it was also the most fertile land outside of Asia.
2 points to improve the trade capacity of the La'l traders and to expand the scope of irrigation to boost the darn population to a meaningful degree.
1 point on society to encourage people to breed like rabbits, and not just proverbial rabbits, literal bloody ones to.
2 points on military to go out and beat some people into a bloody pulp, with the intent of forming buffer states on my western border so that the nomads have someone better to beat up on. I will also support keeping those poor unfortunates alive as as to gain something approaching a training school for killing barbarians. The military egde I hold over everyone what with my professional military and better tech will also be used to conquer/cajole/vassalize all my other neighbors as well.
2 points on society to form a caste system with La'l priests/administrators, Al-La' merchants/adventures, Kratorun warriors, now really soldiers, and Ur-La'l sailors. All of which will become darn good at what they're tasked with doing... or else
1 point on society to encourage people to breed like rabbits, and not just proverbial rabbits, literal bloody ones to.
2 points on military to go out and beat some people into a bloody pulp, with the intent of forming buffer states on my western border so that the nomads have someone better to beat up on. I will also support keeping those poor unfortunates alive as as to gain something approaching a training school for killing barbarians. The military egde I hold over everyone what with my professional military and better tech will also be used to conquer/cajole/vassalize all my other neighbors as well.
2 points on society to form a caste system with La'l priests/administrators, Al-La' merchants/adventures, Kratorun warriors, now really soldiers, and Ur-La'l sailors. All of which will become darn good at what they're tasked with doing... or else
Kraznaya
Princeps
Lord of Elves
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That is my understanding. Look at the majority of Africa, mostly desert and jungle, there are a few plains, but except for the Nile the greater part of the continent is not exactly fertile. Mesopatamia has similar issues, and a large section of swamps in the south.
Cobalt Command said:
History seems to have conformed to that ideal eventually, granted, at this stage most of Europe is fairly useless good only for shifting agriculture or a simulacrum of intensive agriculture. Something about soil exhaustion should be acting to stymie significant population growth. It wouldn't be solved in OTL till the tenth century AD or so.
erez87 said:
Mesoamerica did a fairly good job at it, no? So did India for that matter...
Lord of Elves said:
No. ******ed Euro-centrism which tends to manifest as historical ignorance accounts for that. Besides, America had almost no hand in spreading 'Western' culture to the world, in large part, it was already there long before the silly external signs like McDonalds started to be noted down.
Lord of Elves said:
Why then did it develop so late?
Lord of Elves said:
And yet despite all these seeming advantages it was a few thousand years late to the party. Heck, the areas where civilization first developed in Europe don't even have regular rainfall, have temperatures which are similar to the rest of the Mediterranean and have a paucity of notable rivers. That would be Greece and Italy btw.
Lord of Elves said:
But it had almost nothing in common with anything you just suggested! It doesn't have regular rainfall, which explains the emphasis it had on irrigation. Its temperature is admittedly fairly constant but from a farming perspective that isn't meaningful at all. Since of all the crops suitable for cultivation in Mesopotamia only a handful were suitable for use in cold (and relatively temperature constant Europe) and even then they required substantial periods for acclimatization on the way there. It also has few substantial rivers!
Lord of Elves said:
Eh?
Lord of Elves said:
Why if that was the case didn't civilization develop in Europe then? Only because you have the benefit of hindsight. At the time few of the 'desirable' features you highlighted were in-fact conducive to civilization. Heck, even into the modern era European yields were low. Its no coincidence that Egypt was Romes grainbasket...
Lord of Elves
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The Celts, Germanic peoples, and according to some historians the peoples that would later become the Romans and the Greeks, migrated from the Indus region, and the Caucasus mountains some time before or during the bronze age, and made their way to Europe. (That is where the term Caucasian comes from -- the name for the peoples that migrated to Europe from the Caucasus mountains, or colloquially, white people.)
America, a nation originally founded by Anglo-Saxons, has had a large role to play in the amalgamation of different cultures, and the spread of ideas across cultures. This is not Eurocentrism, but a natural effect of having multiple cultures in one nation under one government. The "mix", this creates results in "cultural memories", that carry across what would be considered different cultures.
Western culture is very hard to define, however, it is generally agreed that it is the creation of early Roman and Greek civilizations, combined with Mesopatamian cultures, and carried across through the Dark Ages into the Germanic nations of post-Fall of the Roman Empire Europe, (England, France, etc). A second period of migrations occurred during the Dark Ages when governments that had previously been outposts of the Roman Empire found themselves hiring mercenaries (mostly regions in which Celtic peoples had lived that the Romans had subjugated, a large amount of these mercenaries were hired by these "Romano-Celts", to control the tribes that had refused to be integrated into the Roman empire), mostly from the Germanic regions of Europe, which led to a large inundation of Germanic peoples into regions that had previously been Celto-Romanic.
Both the Germanic peoples, and the Celts, if history is to be believed originated in the Caucasus, and either migrated to there from Africa or Mesopatamia sometime before the dawn of organized, civilization, in a nomadic period of existence. Eurocentrism, as you call it, is mostly the result of a cultural memory that the migration of mass chunks of humanity created, as well as colonialism by European nations. Eurocentrism, is at best, a flawed cultural memory that carries back to a long-dead era of civilization, in which Europe was identified with civilization by European colonists.
America, a nation originally founded by Anglo-Saxons, has had a large role to play in the amalgamation of different cultures, and the spread of ideas across cultures. This is not Eurocentrism, but a natural effect of having multiple cultures in one nation under one government. The "mix", this creates results in "cultural memories", that carry across what would be considered different cultures.
Western culture is very hard to define, however, it is generally agreed that it is the creation of early Roman and Greek civilizations, combined with Mesopatamian cultures, and carried across through the Dark Ages into the Germanic nations of post-Fall of the Roman Empire Europe, (England, France, etc). A second period of migrations occurred during the Dark Ages when governments that had previously been outposts of the Roman Empire found themselves hiring mercenaries (mostly regions in which Celtic peoples had lived that the Romans had subjugated, a large amount of these mercenaries were hired by these "Romano-Celts", to control the tribes that had refused to be integrated into the Roman empire), mostly from the Germanic regions of Europe, which led to a large inundation of Germanic peoples into regions that had previously been Celto-Romanic.
Both the Germanic peoples, and the Celts, if history is to be believed originated in the Caucasus, and either migrated to there from Africa or Mesopatamia sometime before the dawn of organized, civilization, in a nomadic period of existence. Eurocentrism, as you call it, is mostly the result of a cultural memory that the migration of mass chunks of humanity created, as well as colonialism by European nations. Eurocentrism, is at best, a flawed cultural memory that carries back to a long-dead era of civilization, in which Europe was identified with civilization by European colonists.
erez87
Lord of Random
Mesoamerica didn't have the mountainous, sea based contact, Greek polis cultures. They had something more around kingdoms then Polis.
Lord of Elves
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Some articles that might interest you, Masada. There are also some books on the subjects, and many, many documentaries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_of_the_Caucasus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
As far as English and American history goes, I recommend Simon Schama's documentaries, there are some very good ones from History Channel on the Greeks and Romans. /nerd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_of_the_Caucasus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
As far as English and American history goes, I recommend Simon Schama's documentaries, there are some very good ones from History Channel on the Greeks and Romans. /nerd
civver_764
Deity
I'll be gone all day until tonight but I will be able to start the update then. Hopefully I can get it done by Sunday night but we'll see.
Cobalt Command
Destroyer of Worlds
I thought you were aiming for weekly updates, not bi-weekly. 
civver_764
Deity
Huh? The last update was a week ago. If the update is tomorrow that will essentially be weekly(8 days).
