Unused Geographic Feature Names Hinting at Upcoming Civilizations?

[Luxerne]

Browsing through the game's code, I read through the lists of names for geographic features and cross-referenced them with the lists of features that the civilizations are supposed to discover, based on the game code.

Some features don't correspond to any existing civilization. Some of these seem to have been oversights (Mt. Ararat and Aladaglar Mtns. not being linked to the Ottomans) that were just cut from current civs for whatever reason, but others really aren't linked to any civs at all.

I had noticed this before, but the fact that they added even more unused names in the recent patch, for the lakes and seas, got me suspicious.

Here's the list of the unused names, with the modern-day country they're located in in parentheses.

Rivers:
Agno (Philippines), Irrawaddy (Myanmar), Okavango (Angola, Namibia, Botswana), Orange (South Africa), Zambezi (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique), Red (Vietnam, China), Dniester (Ukraine), Orinoco (Venezuela, Colombia), Paraguay (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina), Amu Darya (Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan)

Volcanoes:
Nabro (Eritrea, Ethiopia), Mayon (Philippines), Pinatubo (Philippines), Taal (Philippines), Ulawun (Papua New Guinea), Mount Hudson (Chile), Galeras (Colombia), Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia), Quizapu (Chile), Ambrym Volcano (Vanuatu), Erta Ale (Ethiopia), Mount Erebus (Antarctica), Ararat (Turkey), Nyiragongo (Rwanda, DR Congo), Askja (Iceland), Grimsvotn (Iceland), Chi'gag (Guatemala), Cosigüina (Nicaragua), Ilopango (El Salvador), Santa María (Guatemala)

Mountains:
Semien (Ethiopia), Arakan (Myanmar), Rwenzori (Uganda, Rwanda), Balkan (Bulgaria), Aladaglar (Turkey), Owen Stanley Range (Papua New Guinea), Tibesti (Chad, Libya), Titiwangsa (Malaysia, Thailand)

Deserts:
Dasht-e Margo (Afghanistan), Registan (Afghanistan), Danakil (Ethiopia, Eritrea), Ogaden (Ethiopia), Kalahari (Botswana, Namibia), Namib (Namibia), Thal (Pakistan)

Lakes:
Laguna de Baý (Philippines), Atitlán (Guatemala), Bangweulu (Zambia), Nicaragua (Nicaragua), Saimaa (Finland), Sevan (Armenia), Tana (Ethiopia), Turka (Ethiopia, Kenya)

and some African Great Lakes: Albert, Kivu, Mweru, Nyasa, Tanganyika, Victoria

Seas:
Bismarck Sea (Papua New Guinea), Gulf of California (Mexico), Gulf of Panama (Panama), Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea), Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), Mozambique Channel (Mozambique, Madagascar), Solomon Sea (Papua New Guinea), Sulu Sea (Philippines)

(The Caribbean, Sargasso, and Scotia seas are also listed)



I can see a clear case for a Maya or Ethiopian civ in the works, given the amount of features from Central America and the Horn of Africa, which was to be expected given their status as mainstays. The Aztec and Nubian feature names are very specifically limited to Central Mexico and Sudan respectively.

What got me really interested was the amount of features from the Philippines, New Guinea, Afghanistan, and the former Gran Colombia...

Make of this what you will.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Aren't there multiple civs that include the same feature in their lists? I'm pretty sure both Mali and Egypt have the Sahara Desert.

And several civs have the Rhine River.

 

[Luxerne]

Aren't there multiple civs that include the same feature in their lists? I'm pretty sure both Mali and Egypt have the Sahara Desert.

And several civs have the Rhine River.

Yeah, many geographic features can be discovered by multiple civs. According to the data files, nine different civs can discover the Mediterranean, for example.

The ones I listed in the OP are those that the game's code doesn't link to any civs at all.

 

[Cerilis]

Can you discern which of those have been added by the recent patch?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Yeah, many geographic features can be discovered by multiple civs. According to the data files, nine different civs can discover the Mediterranean, for example.

The ones I listed in the OP are those that the game's code doesn't link to any civs at all.

Okay, I misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting major features that weren't in the game yet.

You can kind of see Byzantines getting ones from Turkey and Armenia perhaps. There's several in northern South America that could go to Gran Colombia. There sure are quite a few from the east coast of Africa in general and some from the Philippines.

 

[Luxerne]

Can you discern which of those have been added by the recent patch?

Sorry, I should've been clearer: the lake and sea names are the only new additions in the patch. The river, mountain, volcano, and desert names I listed were in the game before the patch.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Personally I'm not expecting any more major expansions. But I wouldn't be surprised to see another 2 or 3 civ pack. Ethiopia and Maya seems like a good pack as they are both relatively important historically in their region

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

@bite would you be interested in making a map of just these disassociated features and see what it looks like?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Okay, I misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting major features that weren't in the game yet.

You can kind of see Byzantines getting ones from Turkey and Armenia perhaps.

Hittites!

Though you figure an Armenia would make it in at some point . . .

 

[679x]

Cool find! I wouldn't have thought much of it, maybe it could be some older idea by the devs to use this for TSL Earth - if it weren't for the fact that many of these come from the same regions, and that they added more unused ones in the latest patch.

@bite would you be interested in making a map of just these disassociated features and see what it looks like?

If someone would be so willing to spend the time making a map of these, that'd be awesome. Then we'd really get to see the connections and start speculating as to whether this means anything. Like whether all those Central American features all happen to overlap on the territory of a single historical nation or tribe, for example.

Ultimately, though, could it be possible that these are all just extra names in case a civilization exhausts its list of feature names? Like, say Indonesia, a nation not particularly known for its deserts, yet one that probably hasn't done much colonizing in desert areas, discovers a whole bunch of deserts in-game on a large map. Having few or no Indonesian desert names to draw from, what does the game call those deserts? Does it take them from the name pools of other civilizations? Or would it draw from a list like this of features that don't necessarily belong to any civilization?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Cool find! I wouldn't have thought much of it, maybe it could be some older idea by the devs to use this for TSL Earth - if it weren't for the fact that many of these come from the same regions, and that they added more unused ones in the latest patch.

If someone would be so willing to spend the time making a map of these, that'd be awesome. Then we'd really get to see the connections and start speculating as to whether this means anything. Like whether all those Central American features all happen to overlap on the territory of a single historical nation or tribe, for example.

Ultimately, though, could it be possible that these are all just extra names in case a civilization exhausts its list of feature names? Like, say Indonesia, a nation not particularly known for its deserts, yet one that probably hasn't done much colonizing in desert areas, discovers a whole bunch of deserts in-game on a large map. Having few or no Indonesian desert names to draw from, what does the game call those deserts? Does it take them from the name pools of other civilizations? Or would it draw from a list like this of features that don't necessarily belong to any civilization?

They are supposed to take feature names from other civs not present.

However, Mount Erebus (Antarctica) is in my current game. So who knows?

 

[bite]

@bite would you be interested in making a map of just these disassociated features and see what it looks like?

I'm working on my Sea update atm so I'll see what I can do

 

[bite]

@bite would you be interested in making a map of just these disassociated features and see what it looks like?

As requested, I can created the map, you can find it HERE

 

[Phoenix1595]

I think you could make a fair argument that the unused features could indicate the future inclusion of some civs, like former contestants like the Mayans and Ethiopia. I am not sure there is a whole lot to go on, though. The rest of the features are too geographically disparate for anyone else really, other than to sub Gran Columbia for Maya to cover the more appropriate S. American references, and maybe the Phillippines.

I did think it interesting to see a river or two from the Ukrainian region, if only because Russia suspiciously never included cities like Kiev and Odessa, which are fairly significant enough to be noticeably absent in the base game. However, I say the same think about the absence of the major cultural hubs in Northern Italy, so I do not know if exclusion now necessarily means inclusion later. Anyway, interesting info— thanks for your data-mining!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I feel like at least some of them are vestigial artifacts of a prototype version of the system that just used famous geographical features of the world, lesser so than Natural Wonders, but not civ specific ones.

 

[PhilBowles]

Do city states 'discover' features? Not every one of these regions has an associated CS, but several do.

 

[bite]

Do city states 'discover' features? Not every one of these regions has an associated CS, but several do.

no they don't