Culture (Unit + Quarter) Speculation Thread

[FinalDoomsday]

I'd really like a 'rename my city' option that changes my cities name to one from my current civ's pool of names. That way I could choose to update my empire with new names or stick with old ones if I wish.

 

[j51]

I'd really like a 'rename my city' option that changes my cities name to one from my current civ's pool of names. That way I could choose to update my empire with new names or stick with old ones if I wish.

Yes please!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'd really like a 'rename my city' option that changes my cities name to one from my current civ's pool of names. That way I could choose to update my empire with new names or stick with old ones if I wish.

This is almost a No-Brainer in historical game design, when you consider how many cities have changed names over the centuries and how many Civs have changed their capitals.

And especially with Humankind's game design of 'progressive Factions' for Immersion's sake I'd think it would almost be a necessity to the design so that someone who starts playing Ancient Era as Babylonians with Babylon as their capital doesn't wind up in the Industrial/Modern Era playing as, say, Republican France (I'm not saying that's an actual option in the game, but it's been speculated on in these Threads) with Babylon as their capital, when by that time IRL Babylon hadn't even existed by that name as a city for over 2000 years!

In fact, the site of Babylon is a good example of Name Change Required for Immersion. The same basic site on the near confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates has had a city on or near it since near-Neolithic times, but if I want to play 'historically' I should be able to rename it appropriately:

Ancient Babylon with Babylon as the original city.
Classical Persians and rename it Ctesiphon
Medieval Arabs/Caliphate (or however they title their Middle Eastern Medieval Faction - you know they've just gotta have one) - rename it Baghdad.

To do it right, and repair what I consider an error by Civ, we should be able to 'move' our Capital and rename our cities as desired to maintain whatever feeling of Immersion we are seeking. If I want my modern French faction to have a capital named Lutetia or pick whichever of a score or more cities were actual 'Chinese' Dynastic capitals to be my modern PRC capital, that should be my choice.

 

[aguaacrobata2]

Well, I did ask in the Carthaginians discussion thread about city-naming mechanics... Mostly because of the bias I understand would exist towards early eras city names in my late empire (that is when most of my settling takes place in Civ games).

The Devs answered that cities don't get auto renamed as we advance eras, as the idea is that our late empire reflects our history and our previous cultures, which I find accurate.

Nevertheless, I believe that the option to (manually) rename our cities and an option to move our capital would add to a better immersion in the game, and would better reflect a historical approach, as you guys have pointed out in the previous posts.

 

[mitsho]

What happens when you merge regions? Does merging Thebes and Memphis result in founding Washington DC? Because I do find that point important. As Humankind is a 4X game after all, it's best to rush founding cities, so they'll all have older names? Seems wrong. Of course, Colonization and everything may exist, but then, don't you just have one empire consisting of up to 6 distinct countries where your Harrapans are the core of your Civ with that outlying region of Germany just being the newest addition and not your true nature of that era?

Moving your capital should be easy and there should be an incentive to do so, it's done practically never in Civ and I feel it could add an interesting gameplay component.

 

[conorbebe]

What happens when you merge regions? Does merging Thebes and Memphis result in founding Washington DC? Because I do find that point important. As Humankind is a 4X game after all, it's best to rush founding cities, so they'll all have older names? Seems wrong. Of course, Colonization and everything may exist, but then, don't you just have one empire consisting of up to 6 distinct countries where your Harrapans are the core of your Civ with that outlying region of Germany just being the newest addition and not your true nature of that era?

I'd imagine your cities will take their names from the culture you're playing as at the time of settling. Unlike Civ, I foresee more of a focus on developing your cities first rather than rushing to cover the map as quickly as possible. Perhaps there will be a hard cap on the number of cities the player can have at any given age, with this number increasing as you progress through the eras and take on new cultures.

 

[Siptah]

I'd imagine your cities will take their names from the culture you're playing as at the time of settling. Unlike Civ, I foresee more of a focus on developing your cities first rather than rushing to cover the map as quickly as possible. Perhaps there will be a hard cap on the number of cities the player can have at any given age, with this number increasing as you progress through the eras and take on new cultures.

Don’t know about a hard cap, but EL had a mechanic to disencourage you from expanding too fast. At least for me, it worked in a sense that I was careful to not overstretch.

i hope for easy renaming, as I like to have city lists that are proper in my opinion, which is a different one from a general public at some times ;-) Like non-Spanish Inca names and not mixing classical names with Egyptian ones...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Don’t know about a hard cap, but EL had a mechanic to disencourage you from expanding too fast. At least for me, it worked in a sense that I was careful to not overstretch.

i hope for easy renaming, as I like to have city lists that are proper in my opinion, which is a different one from a general public at some times ;-) Like non-Spanish Inca names and not mixing classical names with Egyptian ones...

Actually, 'Egypt' in the Modern Era is a good example of the kind of peculiar city naming the Humankind game could engender: the original ancient site of Men-nefer (Memphis) is now covered by Cairo, a non-Egyptian city-name, and their largest seaport is Alexandria, a Classical city name if ever there was one! - and, as another example of 'diversity of cities', 'Alexandria' in Egyptian is Raqote and in Arabic Eskenderiyyah - has anybody EVER seen it appear under either title in any game?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Actually, 'Egypt' in the Modern Era is a good example of the kind of peculiar city naming the Humankind game could engender: the original ancient site of Men-nefer (Memphis) is now covered by Cairo, a non-Egyptian city-name, and their largest seaport is Alexandria, a Classical city name if ever there was one! - and, as another example of 'diversity of cities', 'Alexandria' in Egyptian is Raqote and in Arabic Eskenderiyyah - has anybody EVER seen it appear under either title in any game?

So that means Ra-Kedet not an appropriate spelling for Cleopatra's capital in Civ?

 

[Patine]

Well, I did ask in the Carthaginians discussion thread about city-naming mechanics... Mostly because of the bias I understand would exist towards early eras city names in my late empire (that is when most of my settling takes place in Civ games).

The Devs answered that cities don't get auto renamed as we advance eras, as the idea is that our late empire reflects our history and our previous cultures, which I find accurate.

Nevertheless, I believe that the option to (manually) rename our cities and an option to move our capital would add to a better immersion in the game, and would better reflect a historical approach, as you guys have pointed out in the previous posts.

"You can't get to Constantinople, because Constantinople is Istanbul."

 

[SeelingCat]

So that means Ra-Kedet not an appropriate spelling for Cleopatra's capital in Civ?

Rakote/Rakodi/etc is the modern Coptic form, deriving from/related to the settlement that predated Alexander's founding of Alexandria: Rhacotis/Rhakotis, the Ancient Egyptian name of which is transcribed as as r-'-qd(y)t, or more legibly: Râ-Kedet (or perhaps Raˁ-Ḳāṭit, depending on your transliteration/romanization style).

So, pretty appropriate! Although, the Egyptian city list as a whole is a mishmash of Egyptian and Greek forms, with - if I recall correctly - at least one city featured twice (once under its Egyptian name and again under its Greek).

 

[Siptah]

Actually, 'Egypt' in the Modern Era is a good example of the kind of peculiar city naming the Humankind game could engender: the original ancient site of Men-nefer (Memphis) is now covered by Cairo, a non-Egyptian city-name, and their largest seaport is Alexandria, a Classical city name if ever there was one! - and, as another example of 'diversity of cities', 'Alexandria' in Egyptian is Raqote and in Arabic Eskenderiyyah - has anybody EVER seen it appear under either title in any game?

Small detail: Men-Nefer is nearby a small village called Mit-Rahina nowadays. A lot of names in Egypt are actually pretty constant, and only changed slightly, Alexandria, Ashmunin or Heliopolis are good examples for this. Alexandria should never appear as Raqote in any game, as this was just a small village under this name. Ra Kedet is nonsense for Cleopatra‘s time.

Also, games tend to translate city names whenever possible to the localized language - English language civ doesn‘t know München, Warszawa or Al Qahira. I hope that Humankind will. Even if it can‘t be done easy with non-Latin script names.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Rakote/Rakodi/etc is the modern Coptic form, deriving from/related to the settlement that predated Alexander's founding of Alexandria: Rhacotis/Rhakotis, the Ancient Egyptian name of which is transcribed as as r-'-qd(y)t, or more legibly: Râ-Kedet (or perhaps Raˁ-Ḳāṭit, depending on your transliteration/romanization style).

So, pretty appropriate! Although, the Egyptian city list as a whole is a mishmash of Egyptian and Greek forms, with - if I recall correctly - at least one city featured twice (once under its Egyptian name and again under its Greek).

To be really Pedantic about all this, this is approximately what it looked like in 'real' Egyptian:




transliterated as:
r-ꜥ-qd(y)t

Of course, while there is evidence for a settlement of some kind there as far back as 1000 - 2300 BCE, it was a distinctly minor place of no particular significance until Alexander turned his architects loose on it. Since the word Romanized as Rhacotis or Rhakotis can also be translated as "building site" there is some speculation that in fact the word referred only to the construction site while Alexandria was being built, and the earlier settlement, which included some kind of port facilities according to the archeologists, may have had an entirely different name.
BUT the earliest Egyptian mention of the site, a stele with heiroglyphs from about 311 BCE, calls the area 'r-qd' - so the game could, quite legitimately, wind up with Egyptian cities similar to the Phoenician ones, with vowels missing as they were in the original 'script'.

As mentioned, transliterating from other 'alphabets' or scripts, like translating from city names in the original language to their 'Anglic' forms, is a Mine Field, especially when, as here, you are dealing with a current Civilization which may have very distinct ideas about what to call one of its 'own' major cities.

For instance, I seriously doubt that Lutetia will appear in a Roman city list for Humankind, since the home city of the game designing company has an entirely different - and much more recognizable - name now.

 

[mitsho]

Egypt is really interesting since no original "pharaonic" names seem to have survived to modern times*, Cairo is of Arab origin (Al-Qahira actually) while Alexandria is of Greek/Hellenic origin and just got its name adapted into Arabic (Al-Iskandaria). I don't think any Roman, Crusader or Turkish name stuck, but nevertheless, this variety of names just shows that it will be weird to have Babylon survive to modernity. Especially since it will happen every game. As an Ancient Culture, it will be founded quite regularly, while there's no guarantee that f.e. Paris will be founded at all. Nevermind Marseille or Bordeaux or Lyon. Rather, France can have as cities only Babylon, Rome, Neapolis,Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan if you ever only found 5 cities and don't feel the need or cannot found anymore when playing as France. Will Humankind result in a parade of Capital Cities?

That just seems like something to be addressed if Humankind really should let us feel the whole story of Humanity. It just may lead to strange set-ups, but then again I am just writing here on speculation and all. But I am optimistic that the developers have an answer to that problem that by the way actually also mirrors (my) fears about the snowball effect, meaning that the early game just matters so much more.

And I am not sure that hard caps on city founding will solve that problem. Hard caps are seldom a good game design choice.

*I am not really sure about this one and don't feel like checking, so please correct me. ;-)

 

[SeelingCat]

It seems to me that, since speakers of Coptic - as the current form/stage/incarnation of the (non-Arabic) Egyptian language - still call Alexandria "Rakot" (albeit alongside "Alexandria" if Wikipedia is to be trusted on this), there is indeed a survival of names from pre-Alexander to modern day; it's just that that continuity is not often apparent in the English language. To borrow an example provided by Siptah, both the Arabic and Coptic names for Heliopolis, "Awn/On" and "On" are still pretty close to ancient "Iwnw/Iunu."

Apparent in the English names, however, we have Damanhur (from ancient Dmi-n-Hrw), Damietta (Tamiat), Qift (Gebtu via Coptos), Asyut (Zawty/Seyawt), and arguably Aswan (Swenett via Greek Syene) that all seem to maintain fairly substantial continuity. (Just for fun, the modern Coptic names are Pitmienhor, Tamiat, Keft/Kebto, Siowt, and Souan respectively.)

However, back to the point at hand, the question I think is what can be done to increase immersion without being a huge time-sink.

Take Thebes for example: It seems to be already on the Egyptian city list as Thebes, but let's say for argument's sake that it was instead given one of its Egyptian names, Waset (or Niwr-rst). Waset could turn into Thebes (or Thebai or Diospolis) when conquered by Greece. Thebes could turn into Luxor when conquered by an Arab culture. But what if Waset went directly to a Frankish or French power: Should it stay Waset (or Ouaset?), or become Thèbes, or go straight to Louxor?

I agree that seeing a Contemporary-Era Soviet Union centered around a core of ancient-named cities seems like it would feel a bit off, but at the same time I'm not exactly sure how you tackle the issue without it spiraling into something huge - and speaking as the creator of a mod that does exactly this sort of thing with over 100,000 names as of now, I wouldn't wish that on anyone!

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It seems to me that, since speakers of Coptic - as the current form/stage/incarnation of the (non-Arabic) Egyptian language - still call Alexandria "Rakot" (albeit alongside "Alexandria" if Wikipedia is to be trusted on this), there is indeed a survival of names from pre-Alexander to modern day; it's just that that continuity is not often apparent in the English language. To borrow an example provided by Siptah, both the Arabic and Coptic names for Heliopolis, "Awn/On" and "On" are still pretty close to ancient "Iwnw/Iunu."

Apparent in the English names, however, we have Damanhur (from ancient Dmi-n-Hrw), Damietta (Tamiat), Qift (Gebtu via Coptos), Asyut (Zawty/Seyawt), and arguably Aswan (Swenett via Greek Syene) that all seem to maintain fairly substantial continuity. (Just for fun, the modern Coptic names are Pitmienhor, Tamiat, Keft/Kebto, Siowt, and Souan respectively.)

However, back to the point at hand, the question I think is what can be done to increase immersion without being a huge time-sink.

Take Thebes for example: It seems to be already on the Egyptian city list as Thebes, but let's say for argument's sake that it was instead given one of its Egyptian names, Waset (or Niwr-rst). Waset could turn into Thebes (or Thebai or Diospolis) when conquered by Greece. Thebes could turn into Luxor when conquered by an Arab culture. But what if Waset went directly to a Frankish or French power: Should it stay Waset (or Ouaset?), or become Thèbes, or go straight to Louxor?

I agree that seeing a Contemporary-Era Soviet Union centered around a core of ancient-named cities seems like it would feel a bit off, but at the same time I'm not exactly sure how you tackle the issue without it spiraling into something huge - and speaking as the creator of a mod that does exactly this sort of thing with over 100,000 names as of now, I wouldn't wish that on anyone!

Whether you are doing it professionally as a game developer or semi-professionally as a Modder or just for personal satisfaction, sooner or later you have to cut it off and say "enough!", or the myriad possibilities will overwhelm you.
In an entirely different context, I had occasion some years ago to look up a multi-volume Gazeteer of place names (towns, villages, rivers, natural features) in the Baltic States, trying to match various place names in WWII records from German and Soviet archives. That's when I discovered that every single town, village, hamlet, river, creek, or hill in the entire region has at least 3 or more different names attached to it. One in the local language - Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian, one in German, a holdover from the Teutonic Knights and later German immigrants, and one in Russian, a reminder of long Russian occupation. AND as you go north, more and more often there are also place names in Swedish or even Finnish from cross-the-Baltic influence.
And all of this is mostly from influences just in the last 500-800 years or so.
Now imagine Egypt or China or modern Syria-Iraq (Mesopotamia), where the possible influences go back 4000 years or more, and it's enough to give you nightmares - and enormous lists of potential/possible 'alternative' city names.

Speaking of the Soviet Union, that's a very peculiar modern case, because they consciously renamed a great many of their cities and towns after the Revolution. Saint Petersburg-Leningrad is probably the best-known example, but when a friend and I wrote a book some years ago on the fighting around Kalinin in 1941, we had to agree with the publisher that 'Kalinin' shouldn't appear in the title of the book because that was the name of the city only under the Soviets - it was and is again the ancient city of Tver' on the Volga north of Moskva/Moscow.
And don't get me started on Tsarityn-Stalingrad-Volgograd!

 

[Siptah]

There is the Paradox dynamic names option, that's very immersive in their games - and Amplitude seems to take a lot from Paradox when it comes to marketing at least. (So, how about a Dev Clash pre-release?)

In this system, provinces and cities have names in many different languages stored, and are renamed according to the owner's language. Of course, not every province (3000+) has a name in every tag's language (how many? 500? 1000?). In EUIV it is somewhat easier, as you can prioritize geographically close languages, so that all of Germany has French names and vice versa. Or the example by @Boris Gudenuf for the Baltic, which changes names when hold by the Commonwealth, or Russia/Muscovy, or the Teutonic Knights, or the Livonian Order etc. If there isn't a specific name in the respective language, it keeps the one in the "home language" of your game. I wonder if Humankind could follow this approach (but keeping the name if there isn't an alternative) - for conquered cities as well as for cities of your former cultures. It doesn't make much sense with cultures whose city list will be a pure guess, like Harappans or Olmecs.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There is the Paradox dynamic names option, that's very immersive in their games - and Amplitude seems to take a lot from Paradox when it comes to marketing at least. (So, how about a Dev Clash pre-release?)

In this system, provinces and cities have names in many different languages stored, and are renamed according to the owner's language. Of course, not every province (3000+) has a name in every tag's language (how many? 500? 1000?). In EUIV it is somewhat easier, as you can prioritize geographically close languages, so that all of Germany has French names and vice versa. Or the example by @Boris Gudenuf for the Baltic, which changes names when hold by the Commonwealth, or Russia/Muscovy, or the Teutonic Knights, or the Livonian Order etc. If there isn't a specific name in the respective language, it keeps the one in the "home language" of your game. I wonder if Humankind could follow this approach (but keeping the name if there isn't an alternative) - for conquered cities as well as for cities of your former cultures. It doesn't make much sense with cultures whose city list will be a pure guess, like Harappans or Olmecs.

I suspect, in fact, that at this point the priority at Amplitude is to find any decent list of city names for either Harappa or Olmec Factions. I've had occasion to look into potential Olmec cities, and even with some controversial paleo-linguistics and, frankly, some guesswork, they've only come up with about 30 Epi-Olmec words and no place names at all. The modern local villages in the area that was Olmec and in which people still speak languages Probably related to Olmec don't help: place names have all been overlaid with Nahautl (Aztec) and other native languages and then Spanish so that the 'original' Olmec place names have been trampled underfoot and disappeared.

 

[Patine]

I suspect, in fact, that at this point the priority at Amplitude is to find any decent list of city names for either Harappa or Olmec Factions. I've had occasion to look into potential Olmec cities, and even with some controversial paleo-linguistics and, frankly, some guesswork, they've only come up with about 30 Epi-Olmec words and no place names at all. The modern local villages in the area that was Olmec and in which people still speak languages Probably related to Olmec don't help: place names have all been overlaid with Nahautl (Aztec) and other native languages and then Spanish so that the 'original' Olmec place names have been trampled underfoot and disappeared.

I admit to being dubious of the game's inclusion of linguistically unattested civ's (like the Harappians or Olmecs), or almost so (like the Huns, where only a few proper names, and POSSIBLE linguistic origins of a few Polish and Hungarian words, are known).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I admit to being dubious of the game's inclusion of linguistically unattested civ's (like the Harappians or Olmecs), or almost so (like the Huns, where only a few proper names, and POSSIBLE linguistic origins of a few Polish and Hungarian words, are known).

I absolutely LOVE the idea of being able to include Civs/Factions in the game that the Civ franchise, with its emphasis on named leaders, cannot touch. On the other hand, having tackled a few city lists since Civ IV trying to get something better than 'borrowed' pseudo-Hun lists (Civ V) and Mod Olmec lists in Spanish (Civ V and VI) and Gaulic and Scythian lists that were frankly ridiculous (Civ V and VI, respectively) I have probably got as good an appreciation of the problems as anyone, and they are daunting.

I understand that Amplitude has a resident historian working with them, and I hope they also have access to some paleolinguists, archeologists, Asian and Central American historical, linguistic and archeological experts, because they are going to need all those disciplines and more.
And I suspect that Harappan and Olmec 'city lists' will still wind up being somewhat fanciful, just for an absolute lack of information available to do any better.

Of course, if they allow us to rename cities at will, I can always pull an Alexander and name my cities Borisopolis, Borisograd, Borisberg, Borisburg, Borisholm, Borisgarth, Boristov, Borisago, Borisiyah, and Gudenuffadam. That should get me through at least one Era of Humankind as a Faction regardless of the 'real' city list!