Idea project - starting cultures

[Rmi]

As part of the idea project, the goal is (afaik) to start a new game with a blank slate. BLUE PLAYER etc.
Then onward from there acquire cultures and branch out towards a true civilization.

I've been doing some research again, and i'm now making a list of the 'first' cultures people should be able to choose. These are the 'entities' defined by language, culture or ethnicity that i think best serve the role of first culture you get at around 50k BC or whatever.

We have to start somewhere, these are my suggestion.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14rBssMab8FoJ12GmexrZVl78HMp178bKzKZSysBtFGo/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Thunderbrd]

Very interesting. So you've taken them basically back as far as you can with research.

 

[Rmi]

Yes, roughly.
I try to choose the first major ethnic group or 'culture' in a region that has come forth from the truly ancient neolithic hunters.
I added the wiki pages for the tribes i chose and added some other wiki info about ethnicity in the back. Those are a hard read about DNA research, migratory patterns and languistic roots.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I just discovered the most amazing thing... maybe some of you knew about this. I did not.

Rather than just researching through Google.com searches, go to www.scholar.google.com and do a search for the topic of research there. Holy cow. It's a free library of actual textbooks on these subjects. Amazing! Seriously I did a search on Yemen there and was blown away by the difference in quality of info it comes up with. You can spend too much time researching with this stuff easily.

 

[Hydromancerx]

This sounds like some ideas we proposed before. In fact I believe I even brought up civs being generic cultures before. Here are some previous topics ...

Progenitor Civs
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/progenitor-civs-my-own-answer-to-genericization.452480/

Progenitor Civs (Revisited)
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/progenitor-civs-revisited.520392/

Generic Civs Revisited
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/generic-civs-revisited.502757/

The last one is almost exactly what you are saying.

I was talking with strategyonly and we got on the discussion of generic civs. And he said I should start a new topic on this.

This idea has been around for a long time. The first steps of this was separating out culture units, heroes and buildings from civs. The next step is as follows ...

Each region gets represented by a Greek Symbol.

Alpha = African
Beta = European
Gamma = Asian
Delta = Middle Eastern
Epsilon = North American
Zeta = South America
Omega = Oceanian

This would mean that say Omega civs would get Oceania as their special building.

Delta (Middle Eastern) Colors

Then we give colors to each region. Note that existing civs could be converted so not to break peoples game such as ...

Beta Purple = Roman
Beta White = English
Beta Blue = French
Epsilon Cyan = Maya
Epsilon Lime = Aztec
Alpha Orange = Carthage
Alpha Gold = Egypt
Alpha Yellow = Zulu
Gamma Magenta = China
Gamma Red = Japan

Thus each flag would be replaced by those above.

Leaderheads are kept but can be used by ANY regional civ. Such as Tokugawa can be used by Gamma Red Empire or Gamma Blue Empire or Gamma Green Empire. Basically any of the Asian civs can use any of the Asian leaders, and the same for the other regions.

Having leaders kept can still allow us to add more leaders if we want in the furture but they are not bound a by a re preset civ.

People currently have been confused on why they can pick say English civ yet are not guaranteed English culture, units or heroes. This way there would be no more English civ to pick but rather "Beta White Empire" that would have the old city flavors and unit styles but under a different more generic name. Note that their color names would be based on the territory colors they already have.

In short this method would allow us to keep all existing leaders. All existing civs would need to be renamed and get new flags. All leaders would need to be tweaked so they were available to any civ in their region.

This means AI personalities would still work because leaders would still be the same. Culturally Link Starts should still work since say Delta civs would spawn next to Delta civs. Likewise revolutions should still work where Delta civs are more likely to revolt from Delta civs.

What do you guys think?

 

[Toffer90]

I just discovered the most amazing thing... maybe some of you knew about this. I did not.

Rather than just researching through Google.com searches, go to www.scholar.google.com and do a search for the topic of research there. Holy cow. It's a free library of actual textbooks on these subjects. Amazing! Seriously I did a search on Yemen there and was blown away by the difference in quality of info it comes up with. You can spend too much time researching with this stuff easily.

Google was better at advertising their scholar search back when they first launched it around 12 years ago. I discovered it quite early and have used it a lot since then, truly an indispensable tool for curious minds.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Google was better at advertising their scholar search back when they first launched it around 12 years ago. I discovered it quite early and have used it a lot since then, truly an indispensable tool for curious minds.

I feel pretty stupid some times due to having been done with all college and high school before the internet became a thing.

 

[Toffer90]

I feel pretty stupid some times due to having been done with all college and high school before the internet became a thing.

You hit the nail there, I discovered how useful it was in the context of school-work, junior high school to be precise.

Those born in 1990 and later have an advantage when it comes to gaining computer knowledge, it's not fair, just how it is.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I feel pretty stupid some times due to having been done with all college and high school before the internet became a thing.

Try having done with all that before PCs were a thing .

Oh great it wont let me connect to that site because the connection is not secure! Time to get the new PC up and running. This one keeps telling me it is not secure and then showing me that it is!

 

[Harrier]

I just discovered the most amazing thing... maybe some of you knew about this. I did not.

Rather than just researching through Google.com searches, go to www.scholar.google.com .

Google puts the sites at the front of their searches depending how much money those sites pay them.

They allegedly are not interested in truth, just money.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Google puts the sites at the front of their searches depending how much money those sites pay them.

They allegedly are not interested in truth, just money.

Makes sense but it still offers a lot better guiding results than the normal search.