Culture (Unit + Quarter) Speculation Thread

[Venceslau Pietro Pietra]

For a Brazilian EQ, since its contemporary era we are to late for a engenho(similar to a hacienda) or colonial barroco stuff. Amplitude seems to like religious buildings for almost every kind of culture so a very crazy ideia of mine is a umbanda terreiro, never gona happen, anyway, a samba school, a micareta or something carnival themed is a safe bet

 

[Xandinho]

For a Brazilian EQ, since its contemporary era we are to late for a engenho(similar to a hacienda) or colonial barroco stuff. Amplitude seems to like religious buildings for almost every kind of culture so a very crazy ideia of mine is a umbanda terreiro, never gona happen, anyway, a samba school, a micareta or something carnival themed is a safe bet

Yeah, the Baroque architecture in Brazil is very rich and my choice would be "Baroque Casarão" for the Brazilian EQ. Here is an example of Casarões in Pelourinho in Salvador and how beautiful they are. But I agree that something like Sambadrome is the most likely, since Brazil will be contemporary and Carnival is the first thing that comes to foreigners' minds when thinking about Brazil, when it's not jungle. Micareta would be horrible and doesn't make any sense.
Other option would be Balneário, but it's not something strictly Brazilian, although Brazil has a lot of them.

 

[mitsho]

Since I proposed Sambodrome above, I feel like I should defend myself. For starters though, I want to say that I would actually prefer something better than the Sambodrome. You give good examples, though some not really fitting in the modern era. I just felt that from a gameplay standpoint, most modern emblematic quarters will probably be industrial or military as most "emblematic" architecture tends to be of older origins. And thus, I quickly thought of other candidates for an aesthetic or cultural emblematic quarter - and I couldn't really think of anything interesting. So I went with the first thing that came to my mind. Again, I'm one of those western foreigners ;-)

Having said that, they will now probably give Brazil a "Football Stadium" emblematic quarter... ;-)

 

[Siptah]

Brazil could get a unique national park, if such things make sense in HK. Something controversial would be an easily spamable common quarter: the favela. I don't think Quadras de samba would be bad, as I think anything related to Brazilian music makes a whole lot of sense - Brazilian music is a rather unique blend and has very dedicated fans throughout the world.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Amplitude seems to like religious buildings for almost every kind of culture.

IMHO, the devs picked religious building as EQs is probably because many EQs are not only buildings, but also social institutions - many Cultures' history and society did evolve around those institutions - and religious buildings are usually connect with an organized religion, which was the centerpiece of many societies.

This point of view also kind of explains why some of the EQ picks are a bit out of the place: A lot of cultures can have a unique building or public space without a unique social role or institution behind it. (cf. Caravanserai and Teahouse.)

 

[8housesofelixir]

Following the idea of "EQ as an institution" I brought up yesterday, I would like to have some comments? criticism? on the current EQ bonus as well as some hope/wishlist about future EQs.

Currently, among the pre-Industrial EQs, only few have a Stability bonus. Aztec's Sacrificial Altar will unlock an action for Stability, instead of direct output. Roman Triumphal Arch can give +10 Stability, but one need to plop it next to a Castle - or even using Castles to surround it - to have the full effect. Most of the pre-Industrial Cultural Abilities are not about Stability as well. It seems that, the primary source of Stability will be from the Commons Quarter.

On the other hand, if we follow the "EQ as social institution" path - which is what makes the EQ system unique compare to Civ's UB/UD/UI - there were societies, especially the "Empires", that were mainly organized around administrative offices, instead of "private" social institutions or military institutions. Roman Empire and Imperial China are typical examples, Imperial China is particularly known for its strong administrative control over local population. Moreover, Humankind already put a strong emphasis on the "governance" as a core game mechanism, including Admins, Stability, Public Servant Slot, etc. It would be very nice for this part of the human history being represented in a 4x game, since many 4x games don't portray this aspect at all.

However, the in-game Rome and in-game China, well, clearly don't focus on that. Rome has the Triumphal Arch for Stability instead of Castrum or Colonia; Ming's EQ is about Influence instead of Stability, despite the fact that the social control of Ming dynasty was among the highest of Chinese dynasties (cf. The Art of Being Governed by Michael Szonyi). And other pre-Industrial cultures don't have an emphasis on Stability or "governance" either, besides Achaemenid Persians and some of the unknown Early Modern EQs, which is kind of a shame.

I hope that there will be pre-Industrial Cultures in the future that focus on governing and Stability, preferably though an "administrative" EQ. For instance, if there will be a Qin/Han Culture for Classical China, I would suggest a Xian Office EQ; if there will be an Abbasid Caliphate for Medieval/Early Modern Era, something alongside the Wizarat (Vizierate, Vizier's Office) would be interesting.

Just my 2 cents here.

 

[grey_Sanzhez]

@SuddenAppearance :

Not sure if it's final chart regarding last era. But lets assume that it was kind of "intermediate final" version.
I want to share some of my speculations about contemporary, based on that chart and receive some of yours.

We could have a lot of countries with unique ground units, but not so many had some outstanding naval or air units before last decades of 19XX.
So lets start with air (4) units.
1) Unique fighter plane with feather(?) symbol, same as single industrial air unit. It could relate somehow to material(wooden) and maneuverability. I believe it's not a dirigible or balloon. Here comes Japan with Zero. Japan could also have some naval, but there are no better bet than Zero for this plane.
2) Unique plane in third column. Some USA plane like b2 stealth bomber? Shouldn't be, because it's a replacement. So here we have some multirole(!) modern aircraft. USA, USSR, other?
3) Unique replacement rocket in second column. I don't believe in another Germans with FAU-2. What is it? Early atomic replacement of tactical rocket? Or rocket artillery also goes in this row? Then it's definitely USSR BM-13 Katyusha.
4) Unique non-atomic(we clearly see atomic one in bottom row) rocket in third row. Israeli rocket defense? Middle east or India rocket? No idea.

Naval: late invisible boat with shield(?) icon, same as Ironclad. Some modern Chinese submarine? Any other country with such submarines?

Land:
In the bottom I see some non-unique unit. It's probably a pioneer. I may assume that it's not\not only a settler kind of unit, but more engineer\military engineer, same as its predecessor.
5) Above it we clearly see artillery line, and it's single unique contemporary representation. It has ability with 3 small lines. I have an assumption that it's where all Soviet rocket artillery goes, starting with BM-8, BM-13 Katyusha to any kind of BM-xx like BM-21 Grad, BM-27 Uragan etc.

Above those we have some anti-tank infantry, then heli, tank and modern tank with ATGM.
6) Next goes unique non-replacement armored vehicle. Recon? Tank destroyer? AAA?
Another armored vehicle, same ideas as above.
7) Unique mechanized infantry. Not sure if modern, could be older one, that replaces modern for some country.
8-9) 2 unique infantries in second column are hardest to guess. Could be any infantry with adaptation to some terrain as wild guess or special forces.
10) Spy\saboteur\special forces\terrorist\revolutionary unit without "invisible" trait. Cuba? No idea.
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Another take from the other end. Let's check cultures.
Americans, Soviet, Chinese, Japanese have good options above.
What about Indians, Brazilian and Australian ones? In all those cases there could be infantry ones, like samples of WWII expeditionary forces with any name(Pracinha, Diggers\ANZAC, Gurkha etc.). Brazil definitely cannot get dreadnought, Minas Gerais was neither invisible nor modern.
Saudi Arabians?
Any perfect matches(1-10) for candidates like Sweden, Israel, Finland, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Korea, Canada, South Africa, Turkey, Pakistan?

 

[8housesofelixir]

The Humankind Steam page posted several new screenshots. Two of them seems to some Contemporary Era Quarters or EQs, as well as Units or EUs.

The first one is about a standoff between American and PRC forces. I guess there might be PRC EQ (or just generalistic Contemporary EQ) and PRC/American EUs in this one.

Spoiler :

The second one doesn't have any name for identification, but the city also has a Contemporary looking Quarter with a unique style.

Spoiler :

 

[notNamed]

The first one is about a standoff between American and PRC forces. I guess there might be PRC EQ (or just generalistic Contemporary EQ) and PRC/American EUs in this one.

The second one doesn't have any name for identification, but the city also has a Contemporary looking Quarter with a unique style.

The thing above the emblematic? missile launcher could be a People's Hall thing? It looks like a slightly less detailed version of the one in Beijing. Can't seem to find anything on the actual city center graphics other than the entrance looking like the one on Shanghai's Municipal Building.
The second screenshot is Sweden. You can see the Riksdag on the small islands up north, which lead us to believe the globules are indeed their EQs, based on the Ericsson Globe.

 

[8housesofelixir]

The thing above the emblematic? missile launcher could be a People's Hall thing? It looks like a slightly less detailed version of the one in Beijing. Can't seem to find anything on the actual city center graphics other than the entrance looking like the one on Shanghai's Municipal Building.
The second screenshot is Sweden. You can see the Riksdag on the small islands up north, which lead us to believe the globules are indeed their EQs, based on the Ericsson Globe.

Thank you for the explanation of Sweden (I don't really know much about Sweden). The model of Riksdag is almost identical to its IRL counterpart.

As for PRC, the building above (or the upper left) the missile launcher unit is indeed the Great Hall of the People, although the scale of its wings is a bit off, and it doesn't look as distinctive as other EQs.

The City Center of PRC has a very generic look, many Chinese administrative buildings have a similar structure.

There is also this globe-y thing, it shows up multiple times in Beijing; probably a Contemporary science quarter or something similar.

Spoiler :

 

[Uberfrog]

Empire State Building and Sydney Opera House wonders too.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I am fully aware that, at this stage, the design of the Contemporary cultures are probably finalized. However, it occurred to me that there is a hardly-known but interesting EQ choice for a Contemporary Japanese culture: Costal Industrial Zone (臨海工業地帯 Rinkai kōgyō chitai).

One of the core characteristics of Japan's industrial areas is that, most of them are costal reclamation grounds. About 3/4 of the coasts of whole Tokyo Bay are reclaimed lands, and nearly all of these reclamations are dedicated to heavy industries such as steel production and coal power plants; the same goes for most of major coastal cities of Japan. Having most of the coastal cities reclaiming lands for industrial use is very much a Japanese thing, and highly related to the Japanese manufacturing boom in the 1960-80s.

Therefore I would imagine the "Costal Industrial Zone" as the EQ for Japan, it can only be build in shallow waters, will receive proximity bonuses from neighboring Harbors and Market Quarters. The main yield of the EQ should be Industry and/or Money, since the production of these industrial zones IRL are primarily for export.

For a list of IRL Japan's Costal Industrial Zones, see here (page in Japanese). The entries that have the characters 臨海 in their names are the costal ones.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I was in Japan in 1950 - 1953 while my father 'commutted' to the Korean War. I resigned myself years ago to the fact that if I were to return to Japan, most of Tokyo Bay as I remember it no longer exists as a body of water . . .

 

[8housesofelixir]

I was in Japan in 1950 - 1953 while my father 'commutted' to the Korean War. I resigned myself years ago to the fact that if I were to return to Japan, most of Tokyo Bay as I remember it no longer exists as a body of water . . .

To be honest, Japan can certainly try to take the title of "the nation of reclamation" from Netherlands at this point. There are a lot of serious plans about reclaiming the whole Tokyo Bay since 1950s - also this (purposed by the famous architect Kenzō Tange) and this. The city of Neo Tokyo in the movie Akira is based on these plans.