If you've already caught my
latest post in the Map thread, you'll know that I've been working hard on Barsoom.
This started when I went to add-in new martian races, specifically white martians and Firstborn (black martians), and had to figure out where to put them. That led to creation of the new map as a first step. Then I had to research every city on the map to find out which race occupies which city. Finally, I had to figure out how many civs it would take to pull off a reasonable representation of Barsoom society.
It turned out that the map that I used didn't include any cities occupied by the Yellow martians (Okars), because they live at the north pole and it didn't include the poles, as our map doesn't. As a result, I dropped plans to include the Okars because 1) they only appear in one book, and not throughout the series, as the other races do, and 2) it's frankly alot of work to design an entire civ to occupy just one City far away from everyone else.
As for the rest, the easy thing would be to have just three civs and divide Barsoom up between them, but that would make no sense to a true fan of Barsoom, knowing that the place is actually a cauldron of squabbling kingdoms. On the other hand, it would be ridiculous to put a different Civ in each city.
So I compromised. I divided up the Red Martians into the competing kingdoms of Helium, Manator, and "The Toolian League", based (except for the Toolians) on alliances described in the books. I divided the Green Martians into three: the Warhoons, the Torquas Hoard, and the Thark Hoard. The White Martians get four cities, but are also split into four civs: the Holy Therns, the Therns, the Lotharians, and the Orovar.
About the Orovar. "Orovar", it turns out, is the name of the original martians. Only the white martians of Horz still call themselves that, so we've been doing this all wrong, naming wise. I've fixed that now, assigning the proper names to the proper civs.
So here's a chart of what we end up with:
You can right click -> view image to see it in better resolution. Note that Dejah Thoris is no longer running Helium. That's her grandfather in charge now. Her daughter is leader of the Toolian League, though. That's because I'd like to have Dejah Thoris as a unit (like John Carter is), so that she can be "rescued".
Purists would argue the creation of the Toolian League, arguing that just about every city in that area is at war with every other city. That's precisely why I bundled them.
Still, that's twelve new Civs, all of them under the control of the AI. So if you want to argue about this, feel free; I'll listen.
You'll also note that there is a separate Kaldane civ, although we have no Rykor units yet. For an answer to that and other unit questions, meet me in the Units thread....