Pre-CNES: Flowers on the Working Title

[Crezth]

Two more order-types for aircraft:

Air Sweep

Biplane, Fighter, and Jet units can engage in air sweep missions. To do so, simply order the mission on any territory within range of the biplane, fighter, or jet you are giving the mission order to. When air sweeping, aircraft will escort strategic bombing missions sent to the target territory, meaning they will join those aircraft in combat should they be intercepted.

Strategic Bombing

Bomber and Heavy Bomber units can engage in strategic bombing missions. To do so, simply order the mission on any territory within range of the bomber or heavy bomber you are giving the mission order to. Aircraft ordered to engage in this way will not participate in battles with other units except when intercepted. Strategic bombing missions roll 1d6+Atk (per bomber) against 1d6+Def (per defending AA). A victory for the attacker means that one installation at random in the defending territory starts razing, and razing rules continue as normal from there. A victory for the defender means a 50% chance that the attacker is destroyed and no damage is done to any installations in the defending territory.

 

[theDright]

Why is there no desert forest type, like the pine forest of the American Southwest?

 

[Crezth]

For the same reason there aren't berms, mounds, cliffs, canyons, mesas, volcanoes, rivers, wetlands, and barrier reefs.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

That can equivalated to the 'Temperate Forested Mountain' terrain.

 

[theDright]

For the same reason there aren't berms, mounds, cliffs, canyons, mesas, volcanoes, rivers, wetlands, and barrier reefs.

No barrier reefs? Crap

 

[Thlayli]

I think that some more of the white provinces on the southeastern continent should be boreal, particularly the ones not bordering ice caps. The incidences of desert directly bordering tundra without any boreal forest in between are slightly weird.

Regarding technology: No complaints thus far. More balancing comments regarding research and whatnot may come when we get some example countries (and $/r totals) to play around with.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Thlayli--think of it as a cold desert, like the Gobi.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I think that some more of the white provinces on the southeastern continent should be boreal, particularly the ones not bordering ice caps. The incidences of desert directly bordering tundra without any boreal forest in between are slightly weird.

Regarding technology: No complaints thus far. More balancing comments regarding research and whatnot may come when we get some example countries (and $/r totals) to play around with.

Thlayli, those areas where tundra contacts desert directly are extremely dry. The big difference between the two is that the tundra areas are so cold that they lose very little moisture to evapouration, while the desert areas are warm enough to properly dessicate. The tundra you speak of is too cold for boreal forest, while the area north of it is too dry, and there's not a significant enough 'sweet spot' in the middle to make a large area of predominately boreal forest biome.

 

[Thlayli]

Basic Proto-Cultural Proposal Post

Why cultures?

As you all know, CNESI: Insert Title Here is essentially a board-game war-game. However, one of the weaknesses of Flowers on the Razor Wire was its near-total lack of backstory. It's important to have, if not extremely compelling reasons for your war of aggrandizement, a compelling aesthetic to make it with.

The goal of this phase is not to make an uber-detailed alternate history replete with a cast of thousands of historical figures and battles and whatnot.

Instead, it's to hash out interesting cultural aesthetics which will make people *care* about their little collection of sprites and territories, and develop realistic reasons why you might hate, love, or want to conquer or ally with your neighbors, in addition to providing underpinnings for research and doctrinal decisions. It is *also* to prevent the Pseudo-Sino Imperial Empire from starting right next to La Republicca di Not-Italia, since that'd be incongruous and strange for people.

---

Okay, what then?

With these goals in mind, let's begin some basic analysis of the macrohistorical trends I believe this map presents us. I have provided a basic overlay of the climate map with my findings:

Ye gods, circles?

Yes. Red circles represent my proposals for Cradle Regions, or early centers of urbanization and agriculture. You all know what a cradle is. The larger blue circles are intended to be Classical Expansion Regions. An OTL comparison for this would be the Mediterranean Sea around 0 CE. These regions should be a meeting point and potential melting pot for multiple proto-classical cultures, such as Semites, Latins, Greeks and Celts.

The larger pink circles represent Early Modern Expansion Regions. This is to say, once the mastery of sea power, gunpowder, and cultural colonization have begun, or new states have emerged on the fringes of the Classical Expansion Regions (e.g. Britain, Germany, Arabia, Mongolia), larger regions and trans-regional empires will emerge. Maritime power, powerful ideological and economic imperatives, and relentlessly advancing technology in the 'core regions' of the world will become trends.

These regions will represent sub-global entrepots of trade and communication such as the economic zone of the Atlantic Seaboard which gradually evolved into the popular conception of the 'West', and the various states on the western fringes of the Pacific which acquired a vaguely similar cultural and linguistic aesthetic as the 'Far East'.

Finally, the black circles represent Cultural Isolates. These are regions where, by merit of their geographic isolation, cultures separated from the emerging global trade network will arise. These cultures can later make their mark on the 'civilized' world by joining it or invading it, but they are excellent places for markedly unique cultures that would be particularly resistant to conquest, at least at first.

I think this provides a decent guideline to begin working off of.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I approve! And for those interested in the origins of humanity, the first members of our species developed in the far west of the southern continent, in the hills around the large inland sea. Humans rapidly propagated outwards and spread across the continent, island hopping and land bridging to the northern continent and crossing a different land bridge to the western continent an ice age or two ago. Interestingly, the nearest green area to this world's 'Olduvai' was too cold and thus unsuitable for the origin of agriculture, though it may be quite a bit better for agriculture with the development of better farming technologies in the future.

 

[Crezth]

Oh, that's perfect, Thlayli! Thank you. Everyone read that post and think on it.

When I have multiple spare moments, I'll post what I want as far as deliverables for this stage goes.

 

[Crezth]

Cultural Submissions

This part of the rules is mostly for pre-NES related stuff. The ultimate purpose of this is to have thematic and aesthetic consistency between certain cultural “zones” throughout the game world. It is essentially all flavor, however I will be using a lot of the established histories to also decide which areas start as urbanized or industrialized.

For now, I am looking for macro-cultural submissions. You may post them in thread or PM them, but... if you choose to PM them, PM me and Thlayli. As the Cultural Submissions Czar, Thlayli is in charge of weaving together all the submissions into something that makes sense, and rejecting parts of submissions that make no sense. Because he’s good at that.

Remember for these cultural histories you’re essentially covering all of time up until the OTL equivalent of 1921.

Deliverables at this stage are:

For non-Thlayli:

You may choose from one of two submission-types per submission. You may make multiple submissions.

Macro-Geographical Submission
Name the continents!
Name the oceans!
Name archipelagos and islands and stuff!
Ascribe sub-names to certain distinguished parts of each continent (i.e. the northern and southern halves of the Western Continent)!

Macro-Cultural Submission
Indicate the region (include a map where you at least roughly outline which part of the world you’re talking about; aim for no less than half a continent to discuss)!
Describe its vague cultural qualities (think big, not small, so that you can encapsulate regions as large and diverse as the mediterranean, the middle-east, china/indochina, africa, and so on)!
Give a brief outline of its history and how you imagine it interacted with other nearby regions (did it spend much of history united or fractured, was it united at some points, did any entities in this region venture outside the region seeking conquest, was it ever conquered from outside, etc. don’t be too specific with names and polities, but think about general historical trends)!

If you want your region to be the one that masters high-capital endeavors and conquers the world via imperialism, you better provide a damn compelling reason for why.

Multiple submissions for one region are accepted and will be contrasted, but generally that’s why I want you to post your submissions in the thread so you can critique one another, bounce ideas, and generally not overlap or contradict too much. Work together!

For Thlayli:

Polish up all the submissions and produce one unified submission at the end that synthesizes everything. Aim for consistency and non-stupidity. Exercise your own good judgment liberally. The final deliverable should look like a brief description of each part of the world in sequence, just enough so that when people make a submission for any one region they know “OK, so I’m submitting for an area that used to host not-Mesoamerican steppe hordes, gotcha” or whatever.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Very interesting

I have lots of ideas, but I think we should agree on some base ethnicity type stuff, before the world becomes a total mish-mash.

Based on Iggy's post, I came up with this tentative idea of pre-colonial genetics, just to get the ball rolling:

 

[Crezth]

After some thought and much consultation, I've decided to scale back the cultural submissions by quite a bit. As of now, I am still accepting proposals for geographical names, but the macro-cultural submissions are being sidelined. The current plan is to finish the naval units and then open up the thread for nation submissions. Stay tuned.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I mean, I could throw nation submissions at you, but I'd like to know if I'm in the right place geographically for pseudo-european or pseduo-japanese or pseudo-iranian, or what have you.

 

[Crezth]

I understand the concern, but the appeal of this NES isn't really in constructing semi-believable historical contexts for a new world. To wit: I really shouldn't care if Not-Italy is next to Not-Japan. That having been said, I'll be seeing if I can't just get Thlayli to construct a cultural framework for the world, sans submissions. But it's no longer a prerequisite for moving on.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Cool! It doesn't matter much to me either, but it would be a nice extra

 

[Thlayli]

After some thought and much consultation

Oh, that's slightly unexpected, since apparently I wasn't part of this consultation process. I was sort of thinking that it'd be good to give the players more influence in cultural development, but if I'm doing it myself I'll probably talk to Iggy and Daft and other creatively minded individuals for influence.

Would have been nice for you to consult me before changing your opinions so abruptly, though. Now of course you run the risk of losing any form of a coherent narrative update to write your NES with, since players are going to be shoving all sorts of illogical nation-states next to each other with no thought for reality whatsoever. Just because I'm playing a boardgame doesn't mean I want my backstory to suck.

I suppose you can salvage this by making sure that players keep their nation concepts close to the background that I design. I'm just trying to make a better modding experience for you.

 

[Kraznaya]

After some thought and much consultation, I've decided to scale back the cultural submissions by quite a bit. As of now, I am still accepting proposals for geographical names, but the macro-cultural submissions are being sidelined. The current plan is to finish the naval units and then open up the thread for nation submissions. Stay tuned.

Shouldn't you let geographic name submissions be concurrent with nation submissions (since they will be named in the language of the dominant culture?)

 

[Thlayli]

Iggy, is a desert in the far northern continent really warranted? I just think we need at least one of the major continents to be entirely temperate if possible, and forests would fit a lot better there if you could adjust the mountains/currents a bit.