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LdiC
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I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...
I believe that in terms of Greek vs. barbaroi scenario, race doesn't help. Culture or language would. so an ethnic group's nationality is a bit limited for the purpose of differentiating Greeks from other cultures. I'm just asking for soomething which lets me relate two ethnic groups as being part of a family (of language/culture/way of life) so I can have something which lets me model Greeks without needing a Greek nationality.
About races: My concerns are mostly genetic. I have some biology background after all, and consider that there's no reason why a deep difference in terms of genotype would necessarily lead to a visible difference in phenotype. That is why I chose the Basque example: If you restrict yourself to Middle Ages Europe, and decide to implement races in the game, Basques would be genetically different form the rest and thus from a genotype point of view a different race. But from the visible phenotype (their face, colour...) that's not relevant. So we could pick a more or less arbitrary number of races, but if the game evolves in such a way that two of them mingle which we didn't have in real life (e.g. pygmies and caucasian), you'd have to do a lot of extrapolation to guess what they'd look like, and whether this particular mix would look different enough from another one to allow discrimination between the groups to occur.
The point about Reunion and Brazil is not a negation that races exist, but a negation of the fact they are useful in the game: When people have similar culture, way of life, religion (not necessarily, depending on the importance of this one), they interbreed whatever their race may be. Thus it's more interesting to have an ethnic group or culture object than a race object in-game, because race will remain unchanged only if the cultures reamin unchanged. Thus race can be seen as a byproduct of culture in game terms (it's actually retaining the race the people started with X generations ago which is a byproduct, since race predates that, but I'm not being academic, I'm talking about the game).
Again, races don't help me in Greek/barbaroi scenario (particularly if you consider that Philip's Macedonians were not always considered true Greeks by Athenians, Spartans, etc.).
So to sum it all again: I want something (I'd call it culture for lack of better word) which lets me have families of cultures. Language is certainly part of culture, and race too, but neither is the whole of it. And I need a function which lets me tell whether two of these cultures are near or far one from another.
That may just be that, by comparing all elements (traditionalism, importance of religion, individualism, etc.) of the ethnic group, I can infer that two EGs are mostly the same. This would mean that I need to compare all these values when checking ethnic riotting/discrimination, though, which is a bit bad as they may slightly vary inside the same nationality.
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YD
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I think we may solve the problem by making a set of factors which add up to "Culture".
Way of life is down to environment I would say.
Language is fairly easy to use as a tool do link and differentiate ethnic groups; it's also not dependant so much on the other factors, the way languages diverge is almost random in terms of the initial sound divergence, but gathers a kind of momentum to consolidate the changes, rather like how water find's it's way down towards the sea, sometimes forming a large "delta" of daughter languages, other times feeding into a lake (?!) .
What could we have? Here's some ideas:
LANGUAGE:
Homologue (L0)
Accent (L1)
Dialect (L2)
Language (L3)
These are like three different levels of language, so you could call them "L1 L2 and L3", you can then map an EG with the "L factor" (Linguistic Divergence), so that those around the capital have a low L factor, and the more disparate populations have a tendency to gradually increase their L factor, to the point were they can evolve to L3 and have a different language, making their propensity to become a new EG greater.
RELIGION:
Shamanistic
Polytheistic
Monotheistic
Atheistic
like language this is kind of both a cultural and ethnic feature innit? I think it's more cultural than ethnic though. (to me ethnicity is to do with aspects of humanity which can't change - race, mothertongue, birthplace)
WRITING:
alphabet (syllabic like Hiragana and non-syllabic like Cyrillic)
pictograph (Maya, Chinese, Egyptian)
phonograph (like Korean)
countries which share writing systems often share cultural affinity.
WayOfLife:
Settled Agriculturalists
Nomadic Pastoralists/Hill Tribes
Coastal and Riverdwellers
I imagine this affects the economy, the kind of trade that can take place, among other things. It seems to depend almost entirely on environment.
SOCIAL TRADITIONS/VALUES:
Kinship Society
Class Society
Matriarchal
Patriarchal
Individualist
Group-oriented
Militaristic?
This must be similar to politics, i'm not sure how much of this is in the social model. It's definitely culture.
AESTHETICS (a way of summing up clothes & buidings!?)
Oriental
Hindu
Classical
Gothic
Monolithic
...
a bit of an intangible, especially if you're dealing with random non-historical scenarios - i.e. the WorldDawn scenario.
Maybe including what kind of Artefacts, Monuments, you build, and frilly things like "artistic trade"... i suppose this is the kind of thing "Wonders" were supposed to cover in Civ.
The idea being that maybe you could have a set of factors to define the term:
"Ethnicity"
And a set of factors to define the term "Culture".
implicit is the idea that two or more ethnicities can share the same culture, and one ethnicity can have two or more cultures.
Can that work? Or are they the same thing really?
I suppose Culture is:
Aesthetics, Values, Religion (bit of overlap), Writing System, Economics, Politics
and Ethnicity is:
Way of Life (bit of overlap) Language, Race, Nationality/Tribalism,
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M.E
------
quote:
Originally posted by LDiCesare
I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...
I think the idea of adding a "Culture Family", as you suggested, is the most straightforward way to do this. The problem with comparing traits is that a Korean-offshoot culture and an Etruscan-based culture could have similar values for many cultural attributes and yet they wouldn't be kin. (However, communication between them should be easier since they have a lot of fundamental agreement on how the world works and what is important. . .)
If we want to get more complicated later we can certainly do that.
yellowdaddy:
The more culture-based ideas you are proposing should go in a social model thread so that they can be considered in context. Some of the things you promote are Already in the social model, FE "Individualist". See the Social Model page.
LdiC
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I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...
I believe that in terms of Greek vs. barbaroi scenario, race doesn't help. Culture or language would. so an ethnic group's nationality is a bit limited for the purpose of differentiating Greeks from other cultures. I'm just asking for soomething which lets me relate two ethnic groups as being part of a family (of language/culture/way of life) so I can have something which lets me model Greeks without needing a Greek nationality.
About races: My concerns are mostly genetic. I have some biology background after all, and consider that there's no reason why a deep difference in terms of genotype would necessarily lead to a visible difference in phenotype. That is why I chose the Basque example: If you restrict yourself to Middle Ages Europe, and decide to implement races in the game, Basques would be genetically different form the rest and thus from a genotype point of view a different race. But from the visible phenotype (their face, colour...) that's not relevant. So we could pick a more or less arbitrary number of races, but if the game evolves in such a way that two of them mingle which we didn't have in real life (e.g. pygmies and caucasian), you'd have to do a lot of extrapolation to guess what they'd look like, and whether this particular mix would look different enough from another one to allow discrimination between the groups to occur.
The point about Reunion and Brazil is not a negation that races exist, but a negation of the fact they are useful in the game: When people have similar culture, way of life, religion (not necessarily, depending on the importance of this one), they interbreed whatever their race may be. Thus it's more interesting to have an ethnic group or culture object than a race object in-game, because race will remain unchanged only if the cultures reamin unchanged. Thus race can be seen as a byproduct of culture in game terms (it's actually retaining the race the people started with X generations ago which is a byproduct, since race predates that, but I'm not being academic, I'm talking about the game).
Again, races don't help me in Greek/barbaroi scenario (particularly if you consider that Philip's Macedonians were not always considered true Greeks by Athenians, Spartans, etc.).
So to sum it all again: I want something (I'd call it culture for lack of better word) which lets me have families of cultures. Language is certainly part of culture, and race too, but neither is the whole of it. And I need a function which lets me tell whether two of these cultures are near or far one from another.
That may just be that, by comparing all elements (traditionalism, importance of religion, individualism, etc.) of the ethnic group, I can infer that two EGs are mostly the same. This would mean that I need to compare all these values when checking ethnic riotting/discrimination, though, which is a bit bad as they may slightly vary inside the same nationality.
---
YD
---
I think we may solve the problem by making a set of factors which add up to "Culture".
Way of life is down to environment I would say.
Language is fairly easy to use as a tool do link and differentiate ethnic groups; it's also not dependant so much on the other factors, the way languages diverge is almost random in terms of the initial sound divergence, but gathers a kind of momentum to consolidate the changes, rather like how water find's it's way down towards the sea, sometimes forming a large "delta" of daughter languages, other times feeding into a lake (?!) .
What could we have? Here's some ideas:
LANGUAGE:
Homologue (L0)
Accent (L1)
Dialect (L2)
Language (L3)
These are like three different levels of language, so you could call them "L1 L2 and L3", you can then map an EG with the "L factor" (Linguistic Divergence), so that those around the capital have a low L factor, and the more disparate populations have a tendency to gradually increase their L factor, to the point were they can evolve to L3 and have a different language, making their propensity to become a new EG greater.
RELIGION:
Shamanistic
Polytheistic
Monotheistic
Atheistic
like language this is kind of both a cultural and ethnic feature innit? I think it's more cultural than ethnic though. (to me ethnicity is to do with aspects of humanity which can't change - race, mothertongue, birthplace)
WRITING:
alphabet (syllabic like Hiragana and non-syllabic like Cyrillic)
pictograph (Maya, Chinese, Egyptian)
phonograph (like Korean)
countries which share writing systems often share cultural affinity.
WayOfLife:
Settled Agriculturalists
Nomadic Pastoralists/Hill Tribes
Coastal and Riverdwellers
I imagine this affects the economy, the kind of trade that can take place, among other things. It seems to depend almost entirely on environment.
SOCIAL TRADITIONS/VALUES:
Kinship Society
Class Society
Matriarchal
Patriarchal
Individualist
Group-oriented
Militaristic?
This must be similar to politics, i'm not sure how much of this is in the social model. It's definitely culture.
AESTHETICS (a way of summing up clothes & buidings!?)
Oriental
Hindu
Classical
Gothic
Monolithic
...
a bit of an intangible, especially if you're dealing with random non-historical scenarios - i.e. the WorldDawn scenario.
Maybe including what kind of Artefacts, Monuments, you build, and frilly things like "artistic trade"... i suppose this is the kind of thing "Wonders" were supposed to cover in Civ.
The idea being that maybe you could have a set of factors to define the term:
"Ethnicity"
And a set of factors to define the term "Culture".
implicit is the idea that two or more ethnicities can share the same culture, and one ethnicity can have two or more cultures.
Can that work? Or are they the same thing really?
I suppose Culture is:
Aesthetics, Values, Religion (bit of overlap), Writing System, Economics, Politics
and Ethnicity is:
Way of Life (bit of overlap) Language, Race, Nationality/Tribalism,
------
M.E
------
quote:
Originally posted by LDiCesare
I just wanted to have 'something' which would tell the Greeks they are Greek rather than barbaroi, without their being necessarily either Spartan or Theban or...
I think the idea of adding a "Culture Family", as you suggested, is the most straightforward way to do this. The problem with comparing traits is that a Korean-offshoot culture and an Etruscan-based culture could have similar values for many cultural attributes and yet they wouldn't be kin. (However, communication between them should be easier since they have a lot of fundamental agreement on how the world works and what is important. . .)
If we want to get more complicated later we can certainly do that.
yellowdaddy:
The more culture-based ideas you are proposing should go in a social model thread so that they can be considered in context. Some of the things you promote are Already in the social model, FE "Individualist". See the Social Model page.
Let's discuss "Cultural Families" or "CF"s
When say "CF" are we talking about:
Aesthetics
Religion
Script
what about
Moral Code?
Way of Life?
On the Social model, it lists Basic attribute which seem to me to be far more about Culture than Ethnicity.
Ethnicity to me is:
Language
Race
in any given "logical" arrangement (either/or both)
perhaps
Land Connection - not relevant for nomads
Nationalism - does this include "ethnic pride"? or does it refer to feeling toward a governing nation?
Culture in the given attributes are:
Religion
Corruption
Traditionalism
and all the Moral Code ones
So with these CFs how will they work?
will there be defined CFs with sets of values for attirbutes which define them? will they be spread like language and religion etc...?
Might it just be a case where a given attribute, e.g.: a writing system spreads and varying numbes of other attributes spread to varynig degrees producing a spectrum of cultural influence? some EGs having more cultural affinities than others, and some lacking in many affinities might share one or two in particular?
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