New Civ Guide: Chola
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dagriggstar
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What even is “an Indian feeling” ?
RedCourtJester
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Andrew Johnson [FXS]
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The history team here worked closely with art to try to incorporate different Southern Indian elements from the right time period and area. I'm not sure how much I can say here, but we had to walk the line between having the buildings recognizable (e.g. the library always has a particular shape) between civilizations, using what assets we could so as not to make the game files huge, and staying true to the architecture. Yes, we drew from Kerala a bit (Kerala was at one point part of the Chola Empire), from Southeast Asia a bit, and kept in mind that wooden architecture would have been more prominent than stone in the Chola's time period for some buildings.
Do keep in mind that some buildings you see in any Exploration screenshot are going to be remaining buildings from Antiquity and might look quite different from what you expect, as they're from another civilization!
About the naval units:
There is a lot of misinformation about the Chola online. The Thirisadai especially was tempting, as the description - a giant battleship - was pretty cool. It's hard not to put a massive early Exploration ship in the game. But I ran into the same problem; I couldn't find references to it anywhere outside of one website, and dropped it accordingly. The Chola navy seems to highlight a problem of certain navies in general in earlier times - these were not ships built by a military machine, but private vessels leased out to the dynasty. To model this, we'd have to make a whole system of private trading houses and navies and fundamentally change the game. An imagination of a centrally-organized "civilization" that makes decisions and does things as a unit falls apart in many times and places. That the dynasty could mobilize massive, impressive fleets when it wanted to is unquestionable, but how these systems worked and what they looked like is a really hard question.
One thing that makes historical work in some places difficult is the kinds of things that people decide is worth writing down. "I conquered these lands" is fine, but it doesn't tell us everything. "I am the greatest king ever" is pretty common, but tells us really nothing. Bravery and might are great for a king, but not of much use for a historian. What a historian wants is something like "I had X number of ships that were built like Y and we ate Z on board; it took us this many days to get there", but few people write that stuff (the best we can often hope for are lists of gifts and tribute).
I'm so happy to see South India represented in the game, and find the Chola dynasty and period really interesting. I hope you do, too.
Do keep in mind that some buildings you see in any Exploration screenshot are going to be remaining buildings from Antiquity and might look quite different from what you expect, as they're from another civilization!
About the naval units:
There is a lot of misinformation about the Chola online. The Thirisadai especially was tempting, as the description - a giant battleship - was pretty cool. It's hard not to put a massive early Exploration ship in the game. But I ran into the same problem; I couldn't find references to it anywhere outside of one website, and dropped it accordingly. The Chola navy seems to highlight a problem of certain navies in general in earlier times - these were not ships built by a military machine, but private vessels leased out to the dynasty. To model this, we'd have to make a whole system of private trading houses and navies and fundamentally change the game. An imagination of a centrally-organized "civilization" that makes decisions and does things as a unit falls apart in many times and places. That the dynasty could mobilize massive, impressive fleets when it wanted to is unquestionable, but how these systems worked and what they looked like is a really hard question.
One thing that makes historical work in some places difficult is the kinds of things that people decide is worth writing down. "I conquered these lands" is fine, but it doesn't tell us everything. "I am the greatest king ever" is pretty common, but tells us really nothing. Bravery and might are great for a king, but not of much use for a historian. What a historian wants is something like "I had X number of ships that were built like Y and we ate Z on board; it took us this many days to get there", but few people write that stuff (the best we can often hope for are lists of gifts and tribute).
I'm so happy to see South India represented in the game, and find the Chola dynasty and period really interesting. I hope you do, too.
Andrew Johnson [FXS]
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As a final note, to say "India" is like saying "Europe" - this is huge place with many different peoples, languages, customs, traditions, etc. What we expect as an Indian aesthetic is often a Mughal or British Raj-era North Indian aesthetic; other parts are often going to look very different!
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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But it doesn't mean 'Fleet Commander' didn't exist BEFORE 19th Century. Throughout humna history, fleet commanders exists as the first Imperial Navy came to be. FXis should shift Fleet Commander unit to be enabled with Sailing tech instead. enabling this unit at Age II is off to me.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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They did use the same language as Mauryans didn't they? like 'Nagr' is shared by both Mauryans, Cholans, Sinhalese and many peoples in Southeast Asia through variations. while both Mauryans and Cholans keep original meanings (City), as well as Continental Southeast Asians (นคร (Nakorn), which in Modern Thai language it means 'Big City' and Ministry of Interior even gives a clear definitions as per legal to further classify proper words for settlements, the term 'Nakorn' means bigger settlement than 'เมือง' (Muang/
Mueang) ). For peoples living farther in the Malaya Peninsula (Chumpon and below), and Icelandic Southeast Asian Peoples, this term (Negara) means an entire country!
Andrew Johnson [FXS]
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Thank you for this; yes, this is indeed backtracing a lot of the work we did.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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And what does Kalam Warship looks like? (and could these be the same ships many Indian Sultanates used to swarm Portuguese 'all sailer' fleet only to be shot to pieces.?)
JNR13
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lol we have been speculating about the inspiration for these buildings a lot and nobody seemed to have an answer. Glad to finally have closure.Maybe I should have posted this instead of rambling about how I've seen these many times before? Sorry for that.
It is a genuine Indian architectural tradition within one of the southern subregions.
Architecture of Kerala - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Lord Lakely
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That makes me wonder whether mercenaries as an active mechanic (not just by levying City State troops) were under consideration, given how wide-spread an important they were across the globe, including during the game's Exporation Age.
Boris Gudenuf
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Ever since the Barbarian Clans Mode became available I have wondered whether that and tthe levying City State troops mechanic weren't harbingers of a real Mercenary system in Civ VII. Given that now All Settlements/Minor Powers start as Less-Than-City types and 'graduate' to Cities only later, the combination of the two would come close to representing the importance of mercenaries IRL.
I confess, I have been playing Civ VI exclusively with Barbarian Clans since it came out because early in the game a large percentage of my Warriors are 'hired' from various Barbarian camps. It would be Real Nice to have something similar available as a more coherent system in Civ VII.
I think that this ship may be the Kalam. The sails appear very similar to references I can find for early Indian ships.
Refs:
Refs:
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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WHAT! Chinese ship designs were actually modelled after Indians?
and 'Kalam' is a 'fat galley' --something an exactly a no do to any roundship to add oars?. First i believe it was Chinese variant.
It's definitely Exploration Age due to the environments it's shown in, so I don't think it can simply be an Eastern variant of the Galley.
There is also this ship, which may be the Eastern variant of the Galleon... or it might also be the Kalam instead.
There is also this ship, which may be the Eastern variant of the Galleon... or it might also be the Kalam instead.
Boris Gudenuf
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India/Southeast Asia had a very different ship-building tradition from the Mediterranean, that seems to have depended much more on sailing rather than any galley-type oared ships. That makes sense when you consider that they were dealing with the Indian Ocean, not the Mediterranean Sea - a whole different set of distances to cross in their ships.
The earliest pictures of (east) Indian ships I know of are from coins, like:
These both date from the 1st - 3rd centuries CE, and show a lot of similarities: 2 masts with square sails (or at least, no sign of the spars needed for lateen sails) double steering oars. The ship on the right is later, and shows some kind of platform or addition at the stern, but for what purpose is hard to say.
This is taken from cave drawings at Ajanta, and dates to roughly the 6th century CE, so may be closer to the common Chola types, Still has the round hull of the earlier types, and the double steering oars, but has added a more pronounced upswept bow and stern, a bow sail, and three masts with what appears to be vertically-mounted sails. There appears to be a cabin at the stern, shown in this full of jars (cargo?)
Unfortunately, the Chola themselves do not seem to have bothered to produce any drawings, sculptures, descriptions, or anything about their ships. These "pre-Chola" or "early Chola" sketches are the best we can do, plus very late (post Chola) descriptions by the Portuguese who saw Indian ships in the 16th century. They, by the way, describe Indian ocean-going vessels as having hulls with 2 - 3 layers of planking on them, so that it was almost as if they were armored - early cannon shot bounced off! Whether that was true of earlier (by about 300 years) Chola ships we just cannot tell.
The earliest pictures of (east) Indian ships I know of are from coins, like:
These both date from the 1st - 3rd centuries CE, and show a lot of similarities: 2 masts with square sails (or at least, no sign of the spars needed for lateen sails) double steering oars. The ship on the right is later, and shows some kind of platform or addition at the stern, but for what purpose is hard to say.
This is taken from cave drawings at Ajanta, and dates to roughly the 6th century CE, so may be closer to the common Chola types, Still has the round hull of the earlier types, and the double steering oars, but has added a more pronounced upswept bow and stern, a bow sail, and three masts with what appears to be vertically-mounted sails. There appears to be a cabin at the stern, shown in this full of jars (cargo?)
Unfortunately, the Chola themselves do not seem to have bothered to produce any drawings, sculptures, descriptions, or anything about their ships. These "pre-Chola" or "early Chola" sketches are the best we can do, plus very late (post Chola) descriptions by the Portuguese who saw Indian ships in the 16th century. They, by the way, describe Indian ocean-going vessels as having hulls with 2 - 3 layers of planking on them, so that it was almost as if they were armored - early cannon shot bounced off! Whether that was true of earlier (by about 300 years) Chola ships we just cannot tell.
Everything apart from the lower right are junks, tho. Lower left is a drawing of Zhang He's treasure fleet.
As far as inspiration for the in-game unit model goes, I think they're based on the junks as depicted during the Yuan invasion of Japan:
I'm not familiar with that lower-right ship but at the very least you can see how its deck comes to a point, rather than the flat front with the anchor, which is a common East Asian shipbuilding feature.
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Thanks, that is almost certainly what it's based on.Everything apart from the lower right are junks, tho. Lower left is a drawing of Zhang He's treasure fleet.
As far as inspiration for the in-game unit model goes, I think they're based on the junks as depicted during the Yuan invasion of Japan:
I'm not familiar with that lower-right ship but at the very least you can see how its deck comes to a point, rather than the flat front with the anchor, which is a common East Asian shipbuilding feature.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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And Yuan era invasion fleets composed of giant galleys like what's in the Mediterranean or bigger?Everything apart from the lower right are junks, tho. Lower left is a drawing of Zhang He's treasure fleet.
As far as inspiration for the in-game unit model goes, I think they're based on the junks as depicted during the Yuan invasion of Japan:
I'm not familiar with that lower-right ship but at the very least you can see how its deck comes to a point, rather than the flat front with the anchor, which is a common East Asian shipbuilding feature.
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