Sorry, Am I missing something? As Disenfranchised's list was just posted
less than 4 hours ago, how is it that you say we have a more recent plan
to push the Norse and Burgundy starts back from 820/840.
Must be really recent if it's not even been posted yet?
I'm open to discussions on anything, so I just hope people aren't making
assumptions without consultation. That's not the way we do things, is it?
BTW just how far would you like Germany's start date to be pushed back?
It's 500AD already, like turn 0?
Blah, I think the rest of the discussion was done in the other thread. I'll go find it and post it here.
Nobody is discussing pushing Germany's starting date back. Umarth is suggesting that it be moved to a later date.
Umarth has suggested making the Papal states start later, rather than at the very beginning. This seems like a reasonable idea to me, as the Papacy wasn't really an independent state until around 760 AD. Obviously, Rome should be around from the beginning, but we might be better off pushing the start of the Papal civ back.
_________PREVIOUSLY POSTED TEXT FROM OTHER THREAD____________
(jessiecat to depravo, 1/5):
Originally Posted by Depravo
Burgundians c.880, Norse c.900-950 I would say.
I'm OK with the first, though prefer the 840 date to cooincide with the start
of the Duchy of Burgundy.
As for the Vikings it would be hard to start so late, as they need time to
develop as a civ in their spawn locations, ie Denmark and Sweden, as
they'd be under pressure from the start from the earlier spawning Germans
who might expand into Denmark before they do. They'd have to start early
enough to found Normandy (ie 911) and earlier than the Kievan Rus as well.
We've already got 860 for Kiev and it was they who founded it.
So maybe about 800-820 for the Norse as I've suggested..
(st. lucifer to jessiecat, 1/9)
Returning to civ start dates, I would once again like to express reservations about having Burgundy start late, and I'd like to have the Norse around from the beginning. There's a little bit of flexibility there, depending on UHV goals, but our early landscape is not going to be very populated if all of our civs start in the 800s.
(jessiecat to st. lucifer, 1/9)
As far as the Norse goes, I originally proposed 700 but people objected and
said it should be 900. So if you want it early, that's fine with me.
(virdrago, 1/9)
I think Burgundy should be later, though there may be issues with France and Germany's sandwiching them. The Vikings should start earlier - just because they didn't leave Scandinavia until the late 800s doesn't mean they didn't have a culture there that grew into the raiding, trading, colonizing group of people later.
(st. lucifer to jessiecat, 1/10)
It's not the history that I have an issue with - it's that the spawn and flip is going to tear the guts out of either France or Germany every single time, probably collapsing one of them - which would be bad in 840. We could move the spawn area further south, but that's getting away from the historical side of things as well, and there's no logical capital - they'd probably end up in Switzerland with a couple of fairly weak cities, or fighting independents in Provence (which might not be so bad.)
I vote for having the Vikings around from the beginning. They'll start out fairly weak - Tonsberg and probably Aarhus, depending on where they found the city in Denmark - but we can reduce their preferences for Germany and the Netherlands to drive them north, which should spur normal development.
(jessiecat to st. lucifer, 1/10)
OK, I do take your point about the later Burgundy spawn, so for the sake of
balance I'll vote for an earlier date.
Same for the Vikings as long as they don't muck up the Germany start or
start raiding Britain too early.
(discussion ends, is overwhelmed by city placement discussion)
_______________________________NEW_________________________________
It was pointed out before that the Norse developed on their own before they started raiding; the beginning of the 'Viking age' marked the beginning of the time period where you had to worry about longboats full of armed Scandinavians showing up on your coastline, but it didn't herald the first existence of armed Scandinavians. Aarhus seems to have been around as a city since 770 or so; Tonsberg shows up shortly thereafter. I'd be happier starting the Vikings earlier rather than later, but if everyone else feels like it should be 820, I don't have a strong objection to it.
840 is a better historical spawn for Burgundy than an earlier date, but their spawning location is a big problem if France and Germany establish themselves in the area (which they really should.) If we start Germany later, it's not quite as big of a problem as they'll have less time to expand westward, but having Burgundy spawn late is likely to cripple or collapse AI France. While I agree that the scattered Burgundians are not civ-worthy, or directly attached to the later Duchy of Burgundy, I proposed their early inclusion for this issue of balance. Whenever they spawn, they're going to have a rough game based on their historical area; hopefully there's a way to make this work without making any of the 3 civs in question unviable.