Wow... What a can of worms.
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.
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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