Official place names of China (at least)

[ancient]

yeah, and why are they spelling Mao Zedong, Mao Tse Tung?

what it is is Pinying vs wades guilles (s/p)

older version is wades guilles but the upgraded it to pinying because it more accurately represents the chinese words...

Beijing looks cooler than Peking and sound better too...

although alot of wades guilles is easier to say..

[Rasputin]

the other problem is that they dont put enough city names in the list, i know its easy to add your own via city.txt but fiiraxis should fix this with some more historicl citys for each civ...

Not that I use historicl names, i use my own custome ones every game,, like PHeasantVille or 2Whalecity

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by UberKruX
perhaps you would like them writren in Chinese itself, and dependening on region, mandrian or cantonese.

All Chinese dialects are written the same, just pronounced differently.

It isn't hard to change the city names yourself in Civ2. I corrected the German (Köln not Cologne, München not Munich, etc), French (Orléans not Orleans), Spanish (Sevilla not Seville), Russian (Moskva not Moscow, etc) and Greek (AthÃnai not Athens etc) city names.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Thanks for the support and further posts. Yes, I just revisited this thread to further rectify the two Chinese leaders' names:

As has been pointed out, Mao Zedong is the official way of referring to Mao Tse Tung.

"Wu Zhao" in Civ2 draws a blank with me. The only version I have heard is Wu Zhe Tian, but both spellings are perfectly valid PinYin and could well be variant names of the same female leader.

As far as validity goes, I argue that the Chinese themselves use PinYin, so we may as well use their method for increased authenticity. I acknowledge that Giles-Wade (sp?) system has been in use for a long time, but then again you should remember that much of the place names were drawn from Cantonese dialect, which is not the Chinese official dialect.

Many more people speak Mandarin than Cantonese. Most Guangzhou people understand Mandarin and Cantonese, but the same cannot be said for Beijing people, who have always known Mandarin but not Cantonese.

"Peking" is a case in point. The only dialect that pronounces the capital city by that name is the Cantonese, and even that is stretching the pronunciation a bit. (They pronounce it more like "Bucking" than "Peeking".) Whereas "Beijing" sounds exactly like how it ought to be pronounced: Bay-Jing. How you could get "Peeking" from that is beyond my limited imagination.

This may seem finicky to you, but I think it would be a matter of decorum and accuracy. For example, it would be a bit much to spell western city names in arbitrary and unofficial ways like "Lund'n", "Paree", and "Edinbra". To say nothing of "Love-bra" (Loughborough in UK).

In any case, a lot of people are familiar with these new names - probably 80% of the population of China. Changing systems from Wade-Giles to PinYin would make it much more accessible for people generally.

Again - hefty apologies for being a pedant. It's part of the genes

[Urban Ranger]

I think the spelling of Hong Kong and Kowloon should be left alone since they are too well known to be changed.

Also Bejing in Cantonese is more along the lines of "Buck-g'ink." "G'ink" is what you get when you pronounce "g" and "ink" at the same time


Shadowstrike,

"X" in pinyin is pronounced like "zh" in English IIRC.

[fittstim]

JellyDonut has the solution. When I started playing, I went through the cities.txt file and changed the "Viking" and "German" cities to more familar and properly-spelled names.

The problem of city names isn't just with China but with every civilization that doesn't have English as a native tongue. Of course Civilization is written in English so therefore it uses the English spelling/pronunciation for names. Since the cities are founded in the BC era, it makes no sense to see Beijing, Istanbul or Leningrad.

But, as mentioned above, this is something that the individual has FULL CONTROL to change themselves. This is not something that FIRAXIS should be dealing with. They need to concentrate on improving the AI !!!!

[Grumbold]

I support the use of historical names that were accurate at the time the city was founded. Use of the Anglicised names is a lesser point. With the ability to edit the city lists and the use of a rename button inside the game it seems more like nitpicking. Leave the city lists unchanged from Civ 2 unless someone has some free time on their hands after the beta testing...

[Provost Harrison]

I have also thought something needs doing with the names of the English cities. There are the major, large cities: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham, Leicester, Hull, Bradford, Southampton, Coventry, Brighton, Stoke-on-Trent.

We also have historically important although not-so-large centres such as York, Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Salisbury, Winchester.

Other cities that are worthy of inclusion are Sunderland, Carlisle, Preston, Blackpool, Shrewsbury, Gloucester, Luton, Taunton, Plymouth, Exeter, Bournemouth, Reading, Northampton, Norwich, Derby, Wolverhampton, Crewe or Durham.

Some silly places were included on Civ2. I have always thought Dover was ridiculous (high in both civ and civ2) considering it is a poxy little ferry port with famous 'cliffs'. Same with Richmond. I mean come on, this is a small town in the middle of North Yorkshire. Several major cities have been omitted from the Civ2 list, included is my home city (Hull) or other historically important places such as Lincoln or Winchester.

[fittstim]

Yeah!

And why is Washington (built in the early 1800's) and New York (or Nieuw Amsterdam - a pitty little Dutch trading post until the Brits "acquired" it) ahead of Boston (1629)?

And where is Plimouth (1620), Jamestown (1609), St. Augustine (1565), Charlesfort (1565) and/or Santa Fe (1607)? These were the first cities of the "American civilization".

Chicago? Give me a break. There should be a built in limit for any city called Chicago against growing above size 2 before the discovery of Railroad.

[death_head]

Sure, just because Ming lives there...

[Alinestra Covelia]

But, as mentioned above, this is something that the individual has FULL CONTROL to change themselves. This is not something that FIRAXIS should be dealing with. They need to concentrate on improving the AI !!!!

Well, I could understand this point of view if I were suggesting something very hard to implement, such as a Mandarin character script or maybe Russian Cyrillic script.

But as it is, all they need to do is change some spellings. This would make the game that bit more accurate, and it could be done in about 2 minutes of their time.

As it is, every time I or my friends install the game, I go into the txt file and change it to make it officially correct. I don't mind doing this, but I just thought Firaxis could spare the two minutes once so I don't have to do it every time.

Sorry if that sounds picky to you. But then again, I think your cities have every right to be properly spelled too. Maybe you don't agree - that's fine.

[Provost Harrison]

Just be grateful you weren't playing civ where the Chinese capital was Peking and you couldn't edit it

[datakodin]

The Chinese cities in Civ are at least different cities.

What can you say about list of Russian cities where the same city could be included with different names - e.g. Tblisi and Tiflis?

[Provost Harrison]

Are they one and the same? I never realised that!

One city appears 3 times in various guises:

York (English)
Eburacum (Roman)
Jorvik (Viking)

[Mahdimael]

Or just copy the file to a disk or via the network if you have one. I've reinstalled civ2 twice when I reinstalled windows on my computer. I usually just change the name to whatever I want when I found the city. It takes 2 seconds and works just fine.

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia


Well, I could understand this point of view if I were suggesting something very hard to implement, such as a Mandarin character script or maybe Russian Cyrillic script.

But as it is, all they need to do is change some spellings. This would make the game that bit more accurate, and it could be done in about 2 minutes of their time.

As it is, every time I or my friends install the game, I go into the txt file and change it to make it officially correct. I don't mind doing this, but I just thought Firaxis could spare the two minutes once so I don't have to do it every time.

Sorry if that sounds picky to you. But then again, I think your cities have every right to be properly spelled too. Maybe you don't agree - that's fine.