Humankind - Germans discussion thread

[8housesofelixir]

but I also wonder why the turtle boat is the geobukseon while the uboat isn't the unterseeboot, which is much more familiar to an English speaking audience.

In Germany they call all the submarines as Unterseeboot. If you use Unterseeboot, it means any submarines, rather than the military submarines used by Germany in both World Wars in particular. The game is clearly depicting those military submarines, they will chose the word U-Boat for it does refer to them specifically.

On the other hand, compare to the Korean name "Geobukseon", we also have a "Confucius School" which isn't a Chinese name at all, and a Japanese name "Tera" that refer to all the Buddhist temples in general, so we can also safely assume that the devs don't have a standard on naming things. Which is understandable but still worth point out.

 

[notNamed]

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a concrete naming scheme. The general idea is to have a preference for native names. In the case of the Confucian School, I believe the name played a big role. Confucius is a well-known entity. K'ung-Fu Tzu (or less comically, Kǒngfūzǐ) and having a description which says "Kǒngzǐ Xuéyuàn - Actually not Kǒngzǐ, but Confucian..." and then namedropping Neo-confucianism this or that somewhere else in the game was maybe seen as a bad approach?

 

[Krajzen]

I am slightly disappointed. Militarist German culture is simultaneously a boring cliche and a stereotype with very unpleasant implications. I'd really prefer Germans being Builder or Scientist, to see display of the cultural power of Germans in those kinds of games for once, instead of always making them brute militarists. Among few greatest scientific cultures the world has ever known - never gets scientific traits anywhere. A picture of uboot sinking down a ship is also not what I would find myself inspired by if I was German. If we really want to make them militarists - why not the Brandenburg Gate instead, or Prussian soldiers from Napoleonic era? It's as if devs really went out of their way to go for ww2 Germany.

It is especially annoying by the fact you could make militarist PRUSSIAN culture in this age and peaceful GERMAN culture in the modern era. This way you get both "Badass Prussian army faction" and "pleasant modern Germany". Oh well.

The mix of Napoleonic warfare and ww1 in one age is not that strange, however. Industrial era must cover roughly the period 1789 - 1914 anyway, so it may be as well slightly extended towards world wars to include them. This way we may have a modern era with a clear identity of cold war + information age, with jet fighters, helicopters and bazookas. I honestly prefer this solution over civ's extreme disproportion towards later eras, with the annoying result that we end with the second half of the game not only being boring by pacing, but also by being mostly in 20th century.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

A picture of uboot sinking down a ship is also not what I would find myself inspired by if I was German. If we really want to make them militarists - why not the Brandenburg Gate instead, or Prussian soldiers from Napoleonic era?

Prussian soldiers from the Frederick the Great era, actually, in the late 1700s, rather than the Napoleonic era, if you want to showcase the period at which they were recognized as the best in the world. They were overtaken by new tactics developed in revolutionary France and soundly beaten by Napoleon in 1806, after which they reformed their army to adopt the French tactics. But they didn't regain a reputation as a tier 1 military again until after the German wars of unification, when they beat the French in the War of 1980 1870 I meant (although they likely beat the French decisively somewhere on a football pitch in 1980).

But this highlights a key point: Amplitude purposefully chose Germany, rather than Prussia, as the culture. Which moves us past the Napoleonic era and pushes us right up against the Great War. Which explains the emblematic choices for Germany, but doesn't resolve the seemingly anachronistic unit selections for one culture versus another, which arises from having a single era covering a lot of ground, military innovation wise.

We'll have to see how they handle it. I'd have thought that circa 1900 would have been a more natural era break, with the introduction of machine guns, metal ships, submarines, and airplanes, all arising from the the industrial revolution, transforming warfare in a more dramatic way than the more gradual evolutions from 1700 through to the mid-1800s. Fundamentally, battlefields today look more like the European battlefields of 1918 than the European battlefields of 1918 looked like the battlefields of 1815. Obviously technological chance has continued to accelerate, but from a game perspective how war is conducted has changed less in the past 100 years than it did in the 100 years prior to that.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

It is pretty strange to try and cram Napoleonic and World War One in a single era. I think its easier to fit the two world wars togeather in a single era since a lot of world war two feels like developments of World War one (machine guns, aircraft, tanks, artillery)

 

[8housesofelixir]

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a concrete naming scheme. The general idea is to have a preference for native names. In the case of the Confucian School, I believe the name played a big role. Confucius is a well-known entity. K'ung-Fu Tzu (or less comically, Kǒngfūzǐ) and having a description which says "Kǒngzǐ Xuéyuàn - Actually not Kǒngzǐ, but Confucian..." and then namedropping Neo-confucianism this or that somewhere else in the game was maybe seen as a bad approach?

I have another post talking about the problem with a Confucius school.

Basically, I don't mind having Confucius for China, this name is well-known and fairly representative - but having "Confucius School" for "Zhou" is plainly anachronism. It didn't exist until around Eastern Han (official Confucian schools) or Song (private Confucian schools).

As for Germany I think it is fine (at least the devs didn't pair U-Boat with HRE or Prussia). This Germany seems primarily refer to the Second Empire.

 

[Narcisse]

Someone on Discord highlighted this anachronism at the Zhou reveal, and suggested "Philosopher's School" for exemple (in Zhou chinese ?) to focus more on all the schools of thought developed during Zhou dinasty. It sounds a valid idea for me.
But Confucian just sounds more emblematic and catchy ?

I mean why Gotica Catedral is not named Plateresco Catedral when it's more emblematic of Spain than whole gothic; and the reference of the model is plateresco ? Or why the Germans Quarter have a generic name which refer of the tech used instead of a german naming ? etc ... etc

I suppose it's always a big debate for the Devs, between choosing a comprehensive, respectful, emblematic, iconic or catchy name^^ AND by the way the gameplay of the quarter, apparently the Brits colonial quarter is really fun, instead of having a catchy name
There is the same thing for some quarters of Civ, but I'm always so curious to know the reason about some choices

 

[8housesofelixir]

Someone on Discord highlighted this anachronism at the Zhou reveal, and suggested "Philosopher's School" for exemple (in Zhou chinese ?) to focus more on all the schools of thought developed during Zhou dinasty. It sounds a valid idea for me.
But Confucian just sounds more emblematic and catchy ?
I mean why Gotica Catedral is not named Plateresco Catedral when it's more emblematic of Spain than whole gothic; and the reference of the model is plateresco ? Or why the Germans Quarter have a generic name which refer of the tech used instead of a german naming ? etc ... etc
I suppose it's always a big debate for the Devs, between choosing a comprehensive, respectful, emblematic, iconic or catchy name^^ AND by the way the gameplay of the quarter, apparently the Brits colonial quarter is really fun, instead of having a catchy name
There is the same thing for some quarters of Civ, but I'm always so curious to know the reason about some choices

I agree with the emblematic/catchy part. For example "Confucian" sounds explicitly Chinese, but "Philosopher's" is more likely to remind many players with a western background of Greek Philosophers. (My suggestion on this case is "Classics School" refer to the Chinese Classics where Confucius draw his ideas from; although the word "Classics" may trigger confusion as well. Maybe Piyong (the name of Zhou official educational institutions) will work as it clearly doesn't refer to any Greek things.)

For the reason behind the name choices, it seems to me that the Emblematic Units are more likely to receive a name from its original language if possible, while the Emblematic Quarters tend to have a very generalist name largely known by the public.

 

[j51]

Maybe the name choices are consistent in French, but not English? I haven't checked and don't feel like bothering myself.

 

[mitsho]

So what, the naming choices don't have to be consistent. They have to be flavourful, engaging, intriguing and so on. They should be historically correct - as much as that is doable of course. But I really don't care all that much whether there's an underlying system or not. We humans tend to overestimate the importance of categories after all.

But yes, they will run into trouble in the German Language Version with the U-boat (U-Boot) against the submarine (U-Boot).

 

[Elhoim]

Maybe the name choices are consistent in French, but not English? I haven't checked and don't feel like bothering myself.

I think I heard they are developing the game in English, there's no "french version" of the game which then they translate (kinda like I have no idea how skills would be named in spanish for our games).

 

[Civinator]

But yes, they will run into trouble in the German Language Version with the U-boat (U-Boot) against the submarine (U-Boot).

A similar problem exists in Civ 3 where the German unique unit is called Panzer, while the normal tanks are called tank (what in German means Panzer). In the German Language version of Civ 3 the normal tank is called Panzer, while the German unique unit is called Deutscher Panzer. Here this solution would mean that the standard submarine is called U-Boot while the German version is called Deutsches U-Boot.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A similar problem exists in Civ 3 where the German unique unit is called Panzer, while the normal tanks are called tank (what in German means Panzer). In the German Language version of Civ 3 the normal tank is called Panzer, while the German unique unit is called Deutscher Panzer. Here this solution would mean that the standard submarine is called U-Boot while the German version is called Deutsches U-Boot.

And just to be completely Militarily Pedantic, "Panzer" is actually a short form: the full designation of a tank in German military terminology is Panzerkampfwagen, abbreviated Pzkpfw. This would doubtless appeal to rthe miniatures wargamers, who get quite engaged about proper nomenclature for the models they labor over, but would simply complicate things for everyone else . . .

 

[pineappledan]

Fundamentally, battlefields today look more like the European battlefields of 1918 than the European battlefields of 1918 looked like the battlefields of 1815.

Spoiler That's one hell of a statement :

Is this mishmash of eras jarring? Sort of. I would put anything after the 1880s squarely into a "Modern Era", rather than an "Industrial Era" I'm surprised to see Germans at all in Industrial, not only because it means Industrial is being stretched all the way up 30s years after German unification, but Austria is also already present. It feels like a rather major contortion of what the Industrial Era even means in order to fit Germany inside it.

I guess they have only 1 more era slot left though... It will be interesting to see the tech tree for contemporary, because that's going to have to encompass everything from penicillin to genomics, from single-winged airplanes to landing on mars.

 

[Krajzen]

Spoiler That's one hell of a statement :

Is this mishmash of eras jarring? Sort of. I would put anything after the 1880s squarely into a "Modern Era", rather than an "Industrial Era" I'm surprised to see Germans at all in Industrial, not only because it means Industrial is being stretched all the way up 30s years after German unification, but Austria is also already present. It feels like a rather major contortion of what the Industrial Era even means in order to fit Germany inside it.

I guess they have only 1 more era slot left though... It will be interesting to see the tech tree for contemporary, because that's going to have to encompass everything from penicillin to genomics, from single-winged airplanes to landing on mars.

We have missed rather obvious fact, that if there are only two ages after 18th century, then we can't get three separate intervals for NAPOLEONIC ERA - WORLD WAR ERA - COLD WAR ERA

I think they have turned industrial into a mix of napoleonic and ww1 and modern into a mix of ww2 and cold war.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

If the game went up to the end of the cold war like 1990 or so it would be a nice ending point with things like the internet as end game unlocks, the whole thing might be less crammed too.

 

[Elhoim]

I'd say this would be more of the "Imperial Era". The units won't appear all at the same time, but managed by tech progress, so I'd say it's fine. No need to pad the tech tree into separate eras that unlock one thing each.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Periodization in game is as hard as periodization in real life - a lot of people, esp. scholars of the last century, will spend more than 20 years to argue with each other about which Era ended in which exact year.

HK has 6 Eras in total: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Industrial, Contemporary. Therefore a lot of entirely different things designed for entirely different purposes will be squeeze into Industrial and Contemporary, naturally.

My personal assumption about why devs choose a periodization like this is that, unlike Civilization, the Eras in Humankind are not about how all the civilizations progress though every Era, but are about how specific cultures flourish in a particular Era.
Napoleonic Era and WWI Era are fine periodizations when progressing though them, but both Eras are too short to evaluate if a culture - say, Japan, Siam, or Zulu - is flourishing and influential in this Era. One can easily design 8-10 cultures around the globe into an Industrial Era or Contemporary Era, but only European and American powers can fit into a Napoleonic Era/WWI Era (the latter will also have an Asian power, Japan, but still).

I'd say this would be more of the "Imperial Era". The units won't appear all at the same time, but managed by tech progress, so I'd say it's fine. No need to pad the tech tree into separate eras that unlock one thing each.

I like this idea. Some important powers in the 18th century are not necessarily industrial but the are certainly imperial. (Independent American colonies, Qing, Oman, etc.)

 

[Siptah]

It should be named late modern era. Simply that. It‘s not too late to change it.

 

[Elhoim]

Should be named "Era V" and all problems would be solved