Progenitor Civs, Take Two

[Praetyre]

Ok, so the last thread on this subject erupted into an only somewhat relevant flame war regarding human biodiversity and it's link to cultures both of the real and Civ variety. Since said thread is long buried and I'd rather start anew with none of the baggage the original carried, I have several proposals for this more modern C2C team's review.

Firstly, the Progenitor Civ concept is, in my opinion, still a sound one, but it is one in need of revision given a closer casual look at the field of anthropology. Thus;
This is by far the most pressing point; we will need a clear and coherent consensus from the C2C team members involved as to whether the cultures should be linked genetically or linguistically. Neither presently has a clear advantage in terms of game utility and practicality, and both would result in radically changed culture pathing (the Roman culture would become crucial for Medieval-era kingdoms, as it was historically, while Proto Indo Europeans remain a keystone in both plans).
Next, Persia would either be an early branch of Proto Indo European (genetically) or Semitic (lingistically).
Thirdly, I am unsure whether Aborigines and Polynesians should be progenitors of each other, or whether they should be seperate Progenitors, or whether they should respectively be tied to some Southeast Asian or Indian and Taiwanese or South American civilization.
Lastly for now, ethnic and languages isolates will prove troublesome regardless of which route we take. The Japanese and Koreans are historically prominent and highly homogenous ethnic and linguistic groups, so they are likely to take center stage much more readily than more inaccessible cultures like Canada or Pakistan.

Secondly, a new system for breakaway civs in Rev. There will be a list of names, assigned by several different regions (not the Culture (X) ones, as these are too broad to serve as singular categories for these purposes), namely:
Aboriginal
American (first the Confederacy, then the fifty states in declining order of population, so the Texas and California republics are most likely to form, perhaps with Deseret as a special dynamic civ name for a Mormon America)
Arab (starting with the non-African Arab League nations, then moving down to historical tribes like the Ghassanids)
Berber (the Maghreb nations)
Canadian
Celtic (including Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
Central African
Central Asian (including Mongols, Tibetans, Turks and Uyghurs)
Chinese (all of the ethnic groups save the Tibetans and Uyghurs)
Dutch (including Boer)
East African
East Coast Indian
Eastern European
English
French
German
Greek
Indian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Latin American (including the Caribbean, save for Afro-Caribbean nations like Haiti and Jamaica)
Mesoamerican (including the Southwest Indians)
Plains Indian
Polynesian
Portuguese (including Brazil)
Scandinavian (including Iceland)
Siberian (including Ainu, First Nations and Inuit)
Slavic
Spanish (including Filipino
Southern African
South American (the natives, that is. Modern nations are covered under Latin American)
Southeast Asian (including the ever mysterious Indonesia)
West African (including West African diaspora nations like Haiti and Jamaica)
West Indian (including the Plateau and Great Basin Indians, having nothing to do with Caribbean natives, who are covered under South American)

The in game civs would all be assigned to some place under these categories. Whenever a Revolution or other event occured to split that civ apart, the program would first search for the "actual" civs placed in that list. So, for instance, if an Olmec player had a revolution, the program would first opt to have the revolutionaries be Mayans, then Aztecs, then a long series of names which don't currently have civs in their own right at the moment.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I always thought Johny Smith version was a cool idea.

 

[ls612]

Given what happened to the last Progenitor Civs thread (IIRC the admins ended up permabanning someone over it), I would be reticent to touch this with a ten-foot pole. Not saying that it's a bad idea, but it can cause issues like what happened last time real fast.

 

[Acularius]

Maybe be a bt more strict and self regulating without involving the mods this time.
I suspect a good solid discussion can happen. I just don't want to stray into topics that deal with 'supremacy' which generally go downhill really fast.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Strangely enough I don't like this idea because it limits choice more than my idea which I have only provided brief descriptions of elsewhere. I would prefer a system where you built your culture (currently split into the Culture and Religion stuff we have) and your leader traits up as you played based on decisions that you make as you go. The simplest change would be that when you get the tech cultural heritage you get to choose your Cultural Region and city art style. the choice of leader traits would be something similar to what was suggested in the "Cultural Heritage" thread.

 

[Thunderbrd]

We need to discuss that in further depth DH. We've got some overlapping concepts there and I think we can come to an agreement on how to go about setting something like that up but I don't want either of us to ruin the other's ability to do what we have in mind so we'll probably need to make a few concessions there.

I'll make an actual design proposal on the concept very soon as its actually surprisingly close on my radar considering that its going to be fundamental in getting culturally tagged units into effect, something that plays into the Combat Mod development side.

 

[SargontheGreat2]

Totally behind this! Great Job

 

[crazyewok]

Well if what your saying is what I think then for England you could change the name to Britain and have breakway civs as: Wales, Scotland, Ireland and dare I say USA. Though I would say USA would be a breakaway of France aswell. Same with Canada.

Well over all in culture development it would most likely go sumarian -> Greek->Roman->Briton -> USA -> Confedracy -> Breakaway states as a example.

Each stage it would break away into other options like a tree. So from sumarian it could go into Greek or Eqyption, Phonican or Persian. At roman level it would split into Brition, Italian, Spain, france and Byzantine.

I could make a whole tree of cultures!

 

[Praetyre]

There is no connection between the Greek and Sumerian cultures that I am aware of, be it cultural, genetic or linguistic. Furthermore, British culture existed long before the Hellenization of Roman culture and is properly considered a subbranch of Celtic culture, which like Greek cultures derives it's genetic and linguistic roots from Proto Indo Europeans.

 

[Thunderbrd]

There is no connection between the Greek and Sumerian cultures that I am aware of, be it cultural, genetic or linguistic.

Almost all Classical societies were vastly influenced by Sumerian refugees from the Black Wind incident that destroyed Sumeria.

When you trace the religious references, you can see Sumerian root influence in Greek, Hindi, Norse (I'd say Egyptian but that was more a matter of the close contemporary proximity of the Sumerians and the Egyptians.)

 

[crazyewok]

I am in the process of looking at all the culture routes. I have spend 3 hours digging up some rough research and have completed this chart. It far from finnished very very far lol and and being a draft its a abit slaped togeather but as I said it not completed.

 

[Il Principe]

There is no connection between the Greek and Sumerian cultures that I am aware of, be it cultural, genetic or linguistic. Furthermore, British culture existed long before the Hellenization of Roman culture and is properly considered a subbranch of Celtic culture, which like Greek cultures derives it's genetic and linguistic roots from Proto Indo Europeans.

True. long before the Romans camethere were Celts in Britain. But those who are now british are a realy strange mix. Angeln( don´t know english name)and Saxons invaded Britain multible times and settled donw there, forming mostly what later became the English, opposed to the celtic Scotts and Welsh.
And then came 1066 and with it Normanic conquerores.. who were themselves of viking origin with heavy french influence.
Then things mostly settled down until Britain formed this huge colonial empire.. leading to a lot of indish, indians? never sure how to call them in english to distinguish them form native american indians... living there now.

And you can probably find things as complicated as that for just about everyone.
Heck, Germans would make sense for a split form the USA. There were enough of them there when it was formed, that German nearly became their official language. And in the Civil War there where whole units speaking german( on the Union side), formed from volunteers mostly coming from political refugees from 1848.

What I mean to say is: You gotta draw a line somewhere where it comes to accuracy, or else you will make this insanely complicated.

And although I am all for DH's suggestion of "build your own civ" ( makes me remeber good old Empire Earth ) because it allows for great customization, I think some form of your plan should be implemented, if only to make revolutions more... sensible. At least the names

 

[crazyewok]

Well hopefully we can have mulitple options of culture change. For example you can have the chance to develop in to brition by the route Roman, celts, saxons or viking.

 

[Il Principe]

Well hopefully we can have mulitple options of culture change. For example you can have the chance to develop in to brition by the route Roman, celts, saxons or viking.

But moddeling this close to reality will make for tons of interconections. I am not against it.. just want to warn you about the amount of work you wold need if you stayed that close to reality.

 

[crazyewok]

It proberbly wouldnt be as complicated as the buidling tree. Plus it can be as simple or as complicated as the developers make it.

 

[crazyewok]

Updated Culture tree I have assembled. Still no where near as finnished as It a massive task traceing everything back. Its only a rough tree as there are so many "minor" cultures and links that it would be near impossibe to list them all! But doing the best I can by only including major cultures and links.