[Mod] True Culture Location and Territory Naming for the Giant Earth Map

[Gedemon]

I don't think I like the idea of losing territory when adopting new culture. I consider changing cultures in Humankind as "evolution" and I see no reason why my capital city for example should suddenly rebel and force me to siege it and conquer just because my society evolved.

I hope this feature will be optional and not forced on players.

If I manage to use BepinEx, there should be options set in a cfg file, and surely that one, yes.

Ideally the mechanism would be a complement of a stability overhaul, but that's long-term development.

As I see it, you have a choice between transcend, evolve (a Culture which has the previous capital in its territories) and a split/revolution. Actually it's a "soft" split, as the old territory is either a friendly IP (city) or a free territory (outposts).

 

[Gedemon]

I am a big fan of semi-historical play/ Earth maps, seeing accurate city names, more or less accurate cultures adds so much enjoyment when you want to re-experience history not just do things on abstract continents with abstract culture changes. Is there any way to publish the entire map with territory numbers/names showing for easy reference? I would like to contribute suggestions in revising the current list.

to see the territory index you need to open the map in the editor and right-click on a territory to select it. But no point to do that now, as I've just noted that an update I'll need to do to the map will mess the current territory indexes and we'll have to start again after the update. So I'll wait for more feedback on the map first, then apply the mandatory changes, followed by the suggestions, then we'll lock the territory index list forever.

Also can we please swap player 1 and player 2 starting locations? If you add Syria to Phoenicia list -- the player 1 starting in Iraq can unlock 4 cultures potentially: Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Hittites (and even migrate to Harappa with some effort). Sometimes one wants to avoid all that Multiplayer leaders switching back from your pre-assigned order or avoid Multiplayer mode completely, so instead of starting in Africa with Nubia/Egypt choice -- starting in cradle of civilization for Single player (player 1) will be more convenient (more choices!).

Can't set number to slots in the editor, its renumbered automatically from 1 to 8 from bottom to top, left to right.

You can start a private MP game and chose another slot.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

If I manage to use BepinEx, there should be options set in a cfg file, and surely that one, yes.

Ideally the mechanism would be a complement of a stability overhaul, but that's long-term development.

As I see it, you have a choice between transcend, evolve (a Culture which has the previous capital in its territories) and a split/revolution. Actually it's a "soft" split, as the old territory is either a friendly IP (city) or a free territory (outposts).

I agree with @Aquila SPQR. I love the idea of acquiring new cultures through geographic acquisition since this gives us a realistic cultural map. But losing territory for simply evolving to a new culture does not feel realistic. Large empires were and are made up of many cultures. I would prefer my empire fall apart due to stability issues. You used the American revolution as an example earlier. The collapse of the entire British Empire was caused by stability issues that were rooted in cultural differences. Maybe instead of losing territory have a major stability penalty for switching cultures. If we decide to remain as the original empire then have some rebel units spawn from the newly acquired cultural center. Just seems there needs to be more motivation to switch cultures if we are penalized with territory loss. Imagine after the American revolution that America crossed back over the Atlantic and conquered Britain.

 

[Gedemon]

Yes, all that fit a stability overhaul mechanism, where, for example, distance from capital is affecting stability. As I said, long term, when I'll be more comfortable with the code (and after a few balance pass from the devs), for now the option will be binary, ie ON or OFF.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Yes, all that fit a stability overhaul mechanism, where, for example, distance from capital is affecting stability. As I said, long term, when I'll be more comfortable with the code (and after a few balance pass from the devs), for now the option will be binary, ie ON or OFF.

The more I think about it the motivation for choosing the new culture should be to get away from stability issues and start fresh. Acquiring territory should come with a heavier stability penalty than what is in the game currently. So having a large empire with major stability penalties that can't be offset would be motivation enough to choose the new culture and lose territory.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

This British-USA example doesn't convince me, probably because I look at the culture changing differently. This is a "what if" scenario, completely alternative. In my view it would be scenario in which entire empire evolved from what we would call British culture to American culture, without the actual need to have independent USA at all. A slow and gradual change, something like ancient Egypt slowly abandoning old Egyptian culture and changing into more coptic like one. Or Greeks slowly changing from hellenistic culture under Roman rule to Byzantine imperial one. It wasn't really connected to losing anything, but it was a slow, gradual, internal change.

When it comes to American revolution - I'd say it was a political revolution first and then slow and gradual evolution of British "colonial culture" to American culture.

If your empire was stable, everything was developed and fine - then why should you suffer the extreme penalty of losing entire homeland just because you chose American culture? In this alternative scenario - there was no American military revolution. It was a peaceful cultural revolution instead, of people across your entire stable empire evolving. Modern English or French people are not the same as medieval ones - they speak different English/French than their medieval ancestors, they have different values, their culture is richer thanks to all that happened since then. Medieval Anglo-Saxons and modern English, medieval Franks and modern French - they are not the same. But not because they lost some territory - but because they gradually changed themselves.

 

[Gedemon]

This British-USA example doesn't convince me, probably because I look at the culture changing differently. This is a "what if" scenario, completely alternative. In my view it would be scenario in which entire empire evolved from what we would call British culture to American culture, without the actual need to have independent USA at all. A slow and gradual change, something like ancient Egypt slowly abandoning old Egyptian culture and changing into more coptic like one. Or Greeks slowly changing from hellenistic culture under Roman rule to Byzantine imperial one. It wasn't really connected to losing anything, but it was a slow, gradual, internal change.

When it comes to American revolution - I'd say it was a political revolution first and then slow and gradual evolution of British "colonial culture" to American culture.

If your empire was stable, everything was developed and fine - then why should you suffer the extreme penalty of losing entire homeland just because you chose American culture? In this alternative scenario - there was no American military revolution. It was a peaceful cultural revolution instead, of people across your entire stable empire evolving. Modern English or French people are not the same as medieval ones - they speak different English/French than their medieval ancestors, they have different values, their culture is richer thanks to all that happened since then. Medieval Anglo-Saxons and modern English, medieval Franks and modern French - they are not the same. But not because they lost some territory - but because they gradually changed themselves.

but how would you translate that in gameplay ?

 

[Tigranes]

@Aquila SPQR There is one basic requirement that brings deeper enjoyment to history games -- things must make at least some remote sense. Civ takes one extreme approach modeling history and HK takes another.

In Civ even with Earth TSL map you start as American tribe in 4000 BC and spend 6000 years being American Civ. And, thankfully, we got RFC mods so that things make a litter more sense.

In HK you can become American Civ in 1M/10 ways by mixing 5 previous era cultures together. Neolithic tribe became Mycaneans who influenced Romans who influenced English who influenced Haudenosaunee who influenced British who became American. Ok this makes more sense than being American Civ for 6K years, but the price you pay is that it all happens on the same land. Mycenae suddenly is American city which makes very little sense. In addition it feels silly to see Olmecs in Nubia. So this mod is trying to help things making more sense. At least there will be an option.

Now about implementation. The basic premise of this mod is that on Earth map you have to own core American territory in order to unlock American culture. Very appealing and sensible approach, I am playing alpha 3 and enjoy my HK experience much more than with random culture changes. But the next step is more controversial: what to do with land from previous eras? Russians became Soviets and kept most of the land, for example. But becoming America and keeping England feels just wrong. It also feels wrong loosing all your efforts in England. I don't know how to settle this ideally. My solution is to compensate with settlers for every city lost and some lump sum of influence/money.

HK settlers/urban crew is very powerful. You get ALL the infrastructure from previous eras, some population and production. You keep all the units and techs and fame.

 

[brick623]

Some interesting ideas here and we could probably come up with a dissertation on anthropology at the same time.

I think the choice between "transcend but keep your old capital/homeland" and "evolve but face a break up" is an interesting one. Maybe have the new culture start with less territory, its (single) homeland region, but have some settlers and armies that will enable establishment of a new core rapidly, to compensate for losing the old capital region. Obviously this would take some balancing.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

but how would you translate that in gameplay ?

It's already there. When you pick a new culture at the beginning of a new era - you just choose how your society evolved during the entire previous era. Choosing new culture is just the embracing oficially all those cultural changes which were slowly going on in your empire. That's why it's cool that in your mod it will be connected to owning proper territory. No more Aztecs going Japanese even without discovering Japanese islands at all. But if Aztecs somehow discovered it, then conquered - it would be possible they would fall under heavy Japanese cultural influence - strong enough to embrace enough influence to consider themselves "Aztec-Japanese culture" - signified by old Aztec unique districts and legacy trait with new Japanese unit/district.

If I were forced to lose my Aztec homeland and play as Japan - I wouldn't be too happy about it, because in my perspective it's not about jumping from one culture to another, but evolving from one to another (as devs intended). And if people of my empire evolved - then why should I lose all those Aztec-Japanese citizens living in Mesoamerica?

@Aquila SPQR There is one basic requirement that brings deeper enjoyment to history games -- things must make at least some remote sense.

That's why I'm writing it, because I believe it makes the most sense.

In Civ even with Earth TSL map you start as American tribe in 4000 BC and spend 6000 years being American Civ. And, thankfully, we got RFC mods so that things make a litter more sense.

To be honest I don't have anything against American civ in 4000 BC, though I prefer Indigenous people when I make custom setup. I don't mind Americans, because I don't consider them "modern Americans" since the beginning. They are "people who will evolve in time into modern Americans". I'm Polish and I live in Poland right now. The closest town was founded in 1226. My village is first mentioned sometime around 1400. But we know thanks to archeology that people were living here much earlier. There was a settlement here in Roman times and there's also a cemetery from the bronze age and neolithic finds as well here (I have a flint tool myself, which I found long time ago). We can't say all those people from neolithic, bronze age and Roman times disappeared without a trace - dying out completely or migrating. Recent studies suggest that their genes are still among modern Poles. Some of them migrated, but some of them stayed here and literally became modern Poles. Now in alternative scenario in which player is able to control and guide those neolithic people into settling in one place and developing an empire - it's not difficult to imagine these are "proto-" people. "Proto-Poles", "Proto-Americans", "Proto-French". Guys who will eventually evolve into nations we know. That's how I always imagined civilization in all my Civ games. It's true that there would be no "modern Americans" without all that European influence, but still it makes enough sense to me to enjoy it.

In HK you can become American Civ in 1M/10 ways by mixing 5 previous era cultures together. Neolithic tribe became Mycaneans who influenced Romans who influenced English who influenced Haudenosaunee who influenced British who became American. Ok this makes more sense than being American Civ for 6K years, but the price you pay is that it all happens on the same land. Mycenae suddenly is American city which makes very little sense. In addition it feels silly to see Olmecs in Nubia. So this mod is trying to help things making more sense. At least there will be an option.

I'm fine with all those transition requirements (in order to become Americans you have to own American land), but I don't agree with losing territory not owned by historical new culture. That doesn't make sense at all to me. I was guiding an empire for few millenia, building a stable and powerful empire full of happy people. And now I should lose 90% of it just because I picked American culture. Why? It's not that I want to play as independent Americans limited to America only. I want to play as my old empire which, thanks to owning land in America, slowly evolved into something we would call "American culture".

Now about implementation. The basic premise of this mod is that on Earth map you have to own core American territory in order to unlock American culture. Very appealing and sensible approach, I am playing alpha 3 and enjoy my HK experience much more than with random culture changes.

As I wrote - I have absolutely nothing against that - I believe it's literally the most needed change in Humankind, the most important mod for TSL maps.

But the next step is more controversial: what to do with land from previous eras? Russians became Soviets and kept most of the land, for example. But becoming America and keeping England feels just wrong. It also feels wrong loosing all your efforts in England. I don't know how to settle this ideally. My solution is to compensate with settlers for every city lost and some lump sum of influence/money.

I'm only opposing this idea of losing all land not belonging to historical new culture. Becoming America and keeping England may feel wrong only if you look at it from "our" perspective. We know that Americans rebelled, declared and won independence and Britain did not become America. But Humankind is an alternative scenario. There is no war of independence there. Americans started to "exist" not because they rebelled against you, but because YOU and your whole empire decided to embrace values known as "American culture", because you had citizens living in America, inventing new customs and lifestyle there and you decided they are good enough to embrace them openly across your entire empire. That's how I imagine it.

Oh, and of course I don't want to force anyone to play the game as I like it, but I'd appreciate to have an option to play it as I'd like it, instead of being forced to play how I wouldn't enjoy it too much. The more options to customize your preferences - the better. In this case those who would enjoy losing old land when embracing new culture and those who would enjoy more keeping it - they all would be satisfied.

 

[Gedemon]

Thanks, I get your point know.

In my playtest it just felt strange (strange as in the vanilla game level of strangeness) to be able (for example) to pick "Franck" because I've just set an outpost in North France the turn before, and fully become "Franck" the next turn while all my cities and all other territories where in Africa.

That's when I thought that it would be better to visualize the change as a revolution (in the specific case where you chose a culture geographically separated of your previous Culture) of the new Culture and you (the "invisible hand" behind the scene) taking the side of the separatists.

And then I realized that was just importing one of RFC mechanism to HK (I mean in my civ5 and civ6 "Historical Spawn Dates" mods, the ability to "jump" to take the position of an emerging civ like in Rhye's mod wasn't available), and that in fact HK was the perfect base for that kind of mod.

Anyway, I'll do my best to keep things as options, but I think we can find a lot of middle-ground (and maybe use them all, depending on the context) mechanisms to either smoother or "rationalize" the "culture jumping". (edit: and maybe not only on TSL maps)

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Hmm... yeah, it may not feel "right" in such case (when you made an outpost in France and picked Franks in the last turn), but that's an extreme case. It would probably feel more natural if you managed to create that outpost 10 turns earlier. And even in this extreme scenario one may argue that even one turn represents a decade or more years "in real life".

Also it's cool that here we have "cultures" instead of "civilizations". That's an important thing IMO. You can basically become an X culture without being an "X civilization". There were influential cultures in our history which were emulated abroad, never (or almost never) strong enough to replace one culture with another completely, but still. For example Franks liked to imitate Roman nobility IIRC (Imperial robes etc) and Romans liked to emulate the Greeks...

Humankind is also about merging and evolving cultures, unlike any Civ game. It's both a great and bad idea. Great, because I like the idea of one culture evolving into another, but also bad because I don't like the idea of Egyptians turning into Japanese without any logical reason.
Actually when I think about it - the game is not about "changing cultures", but about "merging cultures". You do not lose your previous culture - you keep old unique districts, you keep old units, you keep old city centers, you keep legacy trait. You just add something new to that old culture. That's even more strongly suggesting that losing old territory when picking new culture is not a good idea.

Too bad that my modding skills are extremely limited - only to tweaking some values in easy to edit text files... I'm unable to create anything new and put it into the game. In order to make Humankind the truly best 4X game ever for me I'd need few changes - the way for picking cultures more logically (at least historically plausible choices), ability to rename outposts as well and the way to make AI cities change their names when new culture is chosen. The last change is purely cosmetic - I'm a bit tired of idea of having "Russian empire" with no Russian cities at all and with having the same set of 10 "ancient" cities as capital over and over again. Memphis, Kerma, Haojing, Babylon and so on over and over and over again, in every game now and ever. It'd be nice to have Memphis changed to Roma if Roman culture is chosen, for better immersion. Of course on autogenerated maps, on Earth maps city names should stay the same I think.

 

[SeelingCat]

I know folks have already made comparisons to RFC but I'm wondering if maybe borrowing the concept of its stability heatmaps would be useful here perhaps? Each civ had areas (see France's here) that were defined by how much they'd affect their stability to control (no cost, low cost, medium cost, high cost). Perhaps something similar could be a solution to this issue, either affecting a culture's 'global' stability as in RFC, or perhaps more usefully, affecting territorial stability, and could be a mesh of your current culture and the previous one(s).

In the example of the Aztecs-turned-Japanese: the Japanese islands are 'core' (no stability cost) and Korea, and NE China are 'adjacent' (low cost), SE China and Manchuria are 'peripheral' (medium cost), and everything else is foreign (high cost), and then this is augmented by the Aztec influence. Normally, the Aztecs might have Mesoamerica as core; Central America as adjacent; and Texas and the SW United States as peripheral; but because they have shifted away from Aztec culture, those zones are downgraded: maybe Mesoamerica is now only 'adjacent'; Central America is 'peripheral' and the other zones are now 'foreign'.

Obviously this solution depends on Stability not being a trivial problem to solve, but it could perhaps bridge the gap in the conversation here? It will mean that as the 'core' of your empire moves, it will be harder to hold onto your old homelands, but gives the player agency to counter and isn't instantaneous.

Unrelatedly, always happy to help with city/territory name changing when that part comes into play, Gedemon!

 

[Gedemon]

Well, not surprisingly that heatmap for France is almost fully similar to my current "territory indexes to keep on selecting France" list

(edit: updated the list in OP)

And yes, I had some thoughts on using that for a stability map too, as it's much easier to work on less than 255 territories than 16,920 tiles... Could be a bit restrictive for some, maybe another option, not too hard to implement once the data is set.

 

[Tigranes]

@Aquila SPQR

If I were forced to lose my Aztec homeland and play as Japan - I wouldn't be too happy about it, because in my perspective it's not about jumping from one culture to another, but evolving from one to another (as devs intended). And if people of my empire evolved - then why should I lose all those Aztec-Japanese citizens living in Mesoamerica?

Well, because you had a choice: stay as Aztec master of Japanese colony or embrace new homeland with new culture. That's how it worked with European colonies -- Brazilians, Americans, Australians. Now the opposite also happened. Mongols of Yuan dynasty kept the homeland and evolved into Chinese culture. This mod can handle both situations with a simple continent check rule. Same continent -- keep the old land. New continent -- start as a new culture with a settler compensation for every lost city.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

The game should ultimately be about empire building. As the game progresses culture assimilation should come with territory acquisition. In HK cultures are stacked on top of each other with each era. With each culture comes bonuses in yields, unique infrastructure and units. Losing access to these bonuses should occur when the cultural regions break away. If another empire acquires these cultural regions they should gain access to the bonuses. But the game should ultimately be about holding on to the core empire. I thinks it's time for me to step up my modding skills.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

@Tigranes
But it doesn't work that way in Humankind. Even if you switch to Japanese and regard it as a "starting fresh as a new culture" - you will still have Aztec legacy traits. You will have Aztec ancestry. You won't be "Japanese" - you will be "Aztec-Japanese".

Besides - I don't know if you played Europa Universalis or Total War games - but it can be compared to playing one country for the 90% of the time and then switching to some neighbouring country, completely abandoning everything you accomplished. That's not really encouraging to invest in that homeland nor to pick any new culture. In such games I'm interested more in developing my own empire than jumping from one civilization to another. It may be appealing if someone would like to recreate "formerly a colony, now independent" scenario, but may not be appealing to those who would like to build a colonial empire and stay a colonial empire. It will also deter some players, not wanting to lose their "homeland", from picking cultures they would pick otherwise. In short - they wouldn't chose one of the core features of the game because it'd be too punishing. If I had to lose my entire European-African-Half Asian empire just because I chose "Americans" - then no, I'd prefer to not to.

 

[Tigranes]

@Aquila SPQR It is very good and realistic to keep the old traits while getting new ones IF you detach yourself from metropole. Totally makes sense. Stacking bonus upon bonus without making any trade offs is what goes completely against any reason.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

But it's not good nor realistic to destroy the metropolis in the process. That's not realistic and doesn't make sense. Even if you wanted to play as "rebelled colony" like Mexico or Brasil - it'd still be unrealistic to have old metropolis changed into independent people, unable to engage in diplomacy like other real empires.

It seems the best way would be to present players with a choice: "You're going to change your culture. Do you want to switch to new culture and lose territories not held by this historical culture or do you want to keep your old lands like in vanilla Humankind?"

Of course if it'd be possible. Or at least an option in the main menu during game setup or an optional file for manual replacing in the game folder. Because it seems we can't convince each other and just as I find your idea completely unappealing I don't want to see you being unable to play as you'd like to play.

 

[Gedemon]

Ideally they'd spawn as a major Empire, but I don't know if that will be easy (and that number of new players would be quite limited)

I'll release alpha4 tomorrow if I can, as I'm away for the WE, to give time for feedback and it's also generally the moment when I can take a step back and ponder the options.