Coding the "Society Model"

[roquijad]

LDiCesare,

Sorry for a late reply:
Each civ (player) has a nationality also (its govt really). For your militia issue, I'd compare EG's nationality with govts' nationalities (the govts controling the troops in battle, that is).

For example: A player controls the roman govt. Roman civ (govt) controls vasts areas where lots of nationalities coexist. Now an outside celt kingdom attacks a roman province where EGs with celt nationality live in. Since there's a match between EGs nationality and the invading army (and a mismatch with current govt controling the province), you can create a celt militia joining invaders.

[yellowdaddy]

the babylon vibe

i just have to say, that Languages are really glaringly missing out of this society equation.

language is usually the first thing that defines an ethinic group - how can you miss it out!?!

language is an important factor in defining concepts like national affinities, then race, and religion.

you can't really skip these in your social model.

do you have racism?
prejusice against a religious group?
fanaticism?
dialects?

dialects are when languages evolve into new languages.
, or could be a barrier or advantage in certain negotiations.

imagine you are a European nation, and you are competing with Japan for an important treaty with China, the Japanese are going to have an advantage because they can commuicate more easily.

race and language and religion are often historically important factors in the making or breaking of alliances.
so there are real applications for language.

perhaps it could affect your ability to pacify conquered territory or success in espionage.

culture, and language are also a way of conquering territory without expensive and time-consuming military force.

------

examples of ethnic group mergers -
the English - Celtic ethnic group, germanic language
the French - same
the Turkish - Graeco-Armenian related ethnic group, Central Asian language
the Hungarians - Similar.

language could be more than just a cosmetic feature, but even as just a cosmetic feature - it's nice!


your thoughts, please

jack

[LDiCesare]

Re: the babylon vibe

Although I agree languages can be important, I think several assertions you made are false:

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
imagine you are a European nation, and you are competing with Japan for an important treaty with China, the Japanese are going to have an advantage because they can commuicate more easily.

Chinese and Japanese languages have nothing in common. They are totally different, of different language families. One is tonal, the other is not, the grammars are also totally different. There is also little or no ethnic link between China and Japan, althoug Japan has been greatly influenced by Chinese culture.

race and language and religion are often historically important factors in the making or breaking of alliances.
so there are real applications for language.

I agree for religion, but for language, I don't think it is a factor. The issue is more about other cultural links than language. For instance, the Commonwealth is more than a language issue.

perhaps it could affect your ability to pacify conquered territory or success in espionage.

This sounds reasonable.

culture, and language are also a way of conquering territory without expensive and time-consuming military force.

This is where I agree. There are many countries which prevent some "foreign" languages from being spoken in order to force ethnic unity (examples include 19th century France where it was "forbidden to speak Breton and to spit", modern-days Algeria and Indonesia)

examples of ethnic group mergers -
the English - Celtic ethnic group, germanic language
the French - same
the Turkish - Graeco-Armenian related ethnic group, Central Asian language
the Hungarians - Similar.

I am not sure I follow. The French are actually a Celtic ethnic group, invaded by Latin speakers, giving rise to a gallo-roman ethnic group, invaded by Germans, but retaining the latin language. The English are Germanic tribes who slaughtered all male celts in England. Spread of English language in Wales, Ireland and Scotland is not very old, and was imposed by the government rather than a replacement of population as for the English.

I think languages could be modelled to add to the "ambiance", but probably more as an attribute of an ethnic group which could be discriminated against (forbidding to use a language), which would have two consequences: resentment from the target ethnic group and stunting the growth of that ethnic group (or converting people from that group to the nearest group with a legal language). Adding a bonus to siplomacy/spying based on common languages seems possible too.

[yellowdaddy]

yes, i did a 4 year degree in Chinese and Japanese, and specialise in Historical Linguistics, so I'm well aware of the relationship, the the grammar is utterly different - 60% of japanese, Vietnamese and Korean words are derived from Cantonese dialect of Chinese. and most Japs and Koreans can read enough characters to get the jist of a piece - it is well established that an East Asian can pick up another East Asian language about twice as fast as an Indo-European speaker, and vice versa.

check out http://www.sil.org for an overview of probably all the languages in existance, well over 6,000!
..................................................
well.

i should modify my ideas a little on the second quote - but look at the pan-ethnic movments

pan-arabism, pan-americanism, pan-slavicism, pan-celticism, even the Nazis - i think there should be some room for this kind of nationalist movement in a game where politics is apparently a major feature.

it is complex, when we lok at the current thing in Iraq, most Iraqis are Shia muslims, unlike most of the arab world, but still a sense of ethnic brotherhood, based on language is strong - but yes, Hebrew is also a semitic language, but adifferent one, and their religion is certainly a factor which seperates them from arabs.
in this scenario, to what extent is religion on it's own important? don't Sunni muslims generally feel opposed/suspicious towards Shia Muslims? I think this is an example of Language being a factor - because they all speak the same language the suffering of Iraqi civilians affects the populations of other Arab speaking countries, making them feel more inclined to get involved.

of course, if you are french, i don;t know how you might feel if Quebec, Belgie or Suisse were under attack and you saw french speaking victims, or if Francophone African countries would cause you to fell somehow more of a sense of brotherhood?

one thing i would like to see is an ethnic group divided between two nations - take the Basques for example.

If you were playing as France or Spain and you wanted to eradicate them, desroying their language would be one important way of breaking them. likewise a foreign enemy might seek to provide aid to this ethinc guerilla group to weaken your nation...

can we have guerilla ethnic groups who can become nation potentially? as a feature - so that pacifying ethnic groups becomes an important task lest they become militant and seperatist.

if in the Basque scenario, Spain was at war with france, they might seek to bribe the Basques as a way of getting more territory, ameliorating them with language rights and unification.

......................................

i've heard about recent genetic maps being made of of least europe, but perhaps also much of the world.

showing how that the Welsh are genetically related to the Spanish - strengthening the supposed link between Basques and ancient Picts of Scotland, who were there before the Celts.

that the bulk of Scots English and French are very similar genetically.

the English are overwhelmingly ethnically Celtic with a Roman and German influnce, much like the French, but i think the French have more of a Germaninc and Roman influence. the Scots having some of the Welsh and Irish influence in addition. [yes i over-summarised france - excuse moi!]

what i was talking about is how one ethnic popultaion can be dominated by a ethnically different overlordship.

the Hungarians for example - the closest language to Hungarian is called Khanty-Mansi and is spoken to the northeast of the urals in northern russia. thos people look like eskimos or koreans - hungarians generally look like most central/eastern europeans - but a small number do have asiatic features.

the same is true in Turkey, the people ARE by blood descended from a mixture of Greeks and all the Ancient Hittites and probably elements of Iranina and Armenian Georgian. there are from what i've read a small number - 5%-ish who are mongoloid turks, the remnants of the people who brought the asian turkish language.

anyway, i made a set of faces, and thought, if people do mix a little then not only their language, but their race should be affected.

like in Madagascar - a mix of an Indonesian people with East Africans, many Malagasys look neither Black nor Indonesian, but somewhere inbetween, rather like some Cambodians do.

so this is more like an ambient/cosmetic effect of two groups mixing.
.................

so, practical applications:

well, how can i express it?!

1. i think each language should be researched like a technology, and translators should be a resource like engineers or soldiers - discuss!

2. pan-nationalism - i think nations who exist in a scenario where the communication plausibility exists, so probably we're talkin modern scenarios, pan-nationalism should be a feature where:
a. if counrty A is being attacked by country X, and countries B and C have the same language or a same-laanguage ethic group [should be same for religions too]
then the civilians in countries B and C should protest and potentially becom insurgent to put pressure on their govt. to act in support of country A. [this is rather a topical idea, isn;t it!]

3. languages should provide bonuses or handicaps for negotiations, espionage, cultural conquest, pacifying an enemy.

4. language should be a fetaure of an EG which increases it's potential for insurgency/trerrism, and seperatism, and colluding with an enemy.

.............................

language effects


A. ethnic maps

i'd like to see coloured ethinc and language distribution maps, as an overlay, so you can see where they all are.


B. dialects, language evolution, language splitting,

if your empire is too large and dipersed, then new dialects, languages and hence EG's should emerge - didn't this happen with the Roman Empire?!
[it's sort of happened with the British empire too, but only as far as accents really],


C. language merger:

if you conquer an area with a strong language [i.e. it could be an ethnic groupe divide between many nations but still in total having a large population - take the Kurdish people or the Zhuang in Guanxi for example] then your "governor" language should gradually influence this "governed" language, to create over time a new dialect or language.

[yellowdaddy]

another set of thoughts ii'd like to toss inare to do with social structure and how it can affect politics.

there are some societies which are "top-down" societies, and some which are more "bottom up"

in top down societies democracy is more impractical because age or some special status - such as caste or aristocracy exist which have some sense of leadership prestige.

bottum up societies, are really western ones, where to a large extent the aristocracies have been overthrown, and even though status can come through wealth, this plutocratic status does not have any of the smae prestige, but retains the potential for corruption.

it's interesting to see how in Japan during the latter 19th century, all the Daimyo/Samurai aristocracy the top of the four [soldier, farmer, artisan, trader] social castes gradually lost all their money, becoming in debt to the the weathly but lowest of the four social ranks the merchants. creating a distorted society where the lowere classes had all the wealth but all the upperclasses retained all the prestige. more of an insidious transformation - but the Samurai kept this prestige as kind of old boy network, merging with the lower merchant class, so that many Jap execs would claim Samurai ancestors, rather like British execs like to spout about how they may have gone to Eton or Oxford!

just thoughts

but social structure, status of women, civil rights, should be a strong set of factors as well as poverty/wealth gap and religion and language which can influence the politics of a nation.

i have had some thoughts about a Relgion and a Social structure designer ... as part of a vehicle/unit/compnent designer section to the game.

thoughts please!

[LDiCesare]

I confess I know only a few things about writing systems, phonemes and grammar of Eastern languages, but little or no vocabulary. I still wonder whether grouping Eastern Asians together is meaningful. Are the 60% of the words commonly used? Also, what is the influence of the Chinese writing system in these stats? Doesn't it "force" some knowledge of Chinese Mandarin unto peoples like Koreans and Japanese?

About Shia and Sunni, they are first Muslims, and even if they don't share a language (e.g. Berbers, Iranians), are more suspicious of non-Muslims than of one another.

of course, if you are french, i don;t know how you might feel if Quebec, Belgie or Suisse were under attack and you saw french speaking victims, or if Francophone African countries would cause you to fell somehow more of a sense of brotherhood?

Language doesn't matter here. Proximity is much more important to me. I know I'd be moved if Belgians, Italians, Spanish, English, Germans or Irish were attacked, much more than Quebec or French speaking Africans.

1. i think each language should be researched like a technology, and translators should be a resource like engineers or soldiers - discuss!

Looks like a bit complicated to me.I'd probably find it more of a hindrance than a cool thing in-game.

2. pan-nationalism - i think nations who exist in a scenario where the communication plausibility exists, so probably we're talkin modern scenarios, pan-nationalism should be a feature where:
a. if counrty A is being attacked by country X, and countries B and C have the same language or a same-laanguage ethic group [should be same for religions too]
then the civilians in countries B and C should protest and potentially becom insurgent to put pressure on their govt. to act in support of country A. [this is rather a topical idea, isn;t it!]

I agree with that, ethnic groups already allow to model that.

3. languages should provide bonuses or handicaps for negotiations, espionage, cultural conquest, pacifying an enemy.

If so, I'd rather abstract the whole knowledge of foreign languages in a civ as a single "slider" rather than techs, since these require constant education/upkeep. I'd rather abstract that and let it be a part of the spying costs. I can't see how languages alone are important in cultural conquest. Religion is much more important IMO, and the ethnic group already represents enough to manage that.

4. language should be a fetaure of an EG which increases it's potential for insurgency/trerrism, and seperatism, and colluding with an enemy.

I agree it could be a feature of the EG, but unless languages are shared by more than one EG, they will not provide anything useful.

if in the Basque scenario, Spain was at war with france, they might seek to bribe the Basques as a way of getting more territory, ameliorating them with language rights and unification.

Each ethnic group has/should have a set of preferences in terms of which civ it wants to belong to. For example, Basques prefer the Basque civ. If there is none, they will look at the current discrimination policies of other civs and choose the "best" one to fight alongside with. That's already coded and working, although it may be hard to reproduce. I once managed to get both goblins raise for goblins and men for men in the SiegeWars scenario, in the same square in the same turn.

Overall, I think language could be an additional dat in an EG, so discrimination policies could take into account any one of the three religion/language/ethnicity. Common ruler languages would also help in diplomacy/spying, but I'd probably not like to have more language-specific data as IMO it is redundant with ethnic group data.

[yellowdaddy]

chinese is rather like the latin of the orient. spread about by Cantonese merchants as much as Imperial conquest.

in my own research on this i grouped east asians thus:

Sumerians:
Sumerians
Elamites
Tiamat
Ki En Gir
Tilmun
Samarra

Semites:
Akkadians
Hebrews
Arabians
Phoenicians
Shebans
Ethiopians

Persians:
Medians
Sarmatians
Parthians
Kurds
Scythians
Farsi/Pathans
Dari
Kassites

(boil down to 6 to fit)


Indians:
Panjabi
Romani
Sinhala
Bangla
Nepali
Hindi

Dravidians:
Tamils
Kannada
Telugu
Kolami
Tulu
Kurux

Tokharians:
Twyry
Gutians
Kushans
Kucheans
Tokharoi
Tokhrians

Turks:
Altai
Tatars
Kazakh
Bolgars
Uygur
Osmanli

Mongols:
Buryat
Tungus
Huns
Manchu
Khalka
Evenki


Tibetans:
Burmans
Tibetans
Qiang
Chinese
Naga
Karen

Hmong:
Hmong
Mien
Bunu
She
Biao
Bo-Pai

Mons:
Mon
Khmer
Bahnar
Vietnamese
Muong
Munda

Tai:
Siamese
Lao
Kam-Sui
Kadai
Shan
Zhuang

Malayos:
Dayak
Malagasy
Aetas
Chamaru
Sulawesi
Sundanese

Paiwans:
Atayal
Paiwan
Tsou
Kanakabu
Saaroa
Rukai

Kija:
Koreans
Dongyi
Silla
Paekche
Koryo
Japanese

more to come...


Chukchi:Koryak
Chukot
Alyutor
Ainu
Gilyak
[Ket [=Yenisei-Ostyak-unrelated to Chukchi]]
[Yukaghir [also unrelated to Y-O or Chukchi]]

it needs finishing off a little - the last group is a compsite of unrelated NE Asian aboriginal nomadics.

About Shia and Sunni, they are first Muslims, and even if they don't share a language (e.g. Berbers, Iranians), are more suspicious of non-Muslims than of one another.

true, but in the context of the muslim world, they have a history of conflict.

1. i think each language should be researched like a technology, and translators should be a resource like engineers or soldiers - discuss!

Looks like a bit complicated to me.I'd probably find it more of a hindrance than a cool thing in-game.

a hindrance to some, an interesting feature to others - how different is this to some of the debates over military management?

i think a certain amount of cosmetics does make a game more attractive, and add atmosphere.

if you know about DEUTEROS, a game still think fondly of, you may see my POV.

I think your ability to communicate adds a interestic dimension to the game, which i don't see why it couln't be switched of for those who just want to play a simpler game with a homogenous range of enemies/other nations.

i want to add the feature of race too, like this (from my FOOTY game) - i can't attach image, so i'll do it later

[Mark_Everson]

Man, too many details for me to comment on. I am generally in accord with Laurent's thoughts.

1. i think each language should be researched like a technology, and translators should be a resource like engineers or soldiers - discuss!

The first clause seems too detailed to me also. In terms of translators, there are ways for players to invest in various diplomatic initiatives, and translators should be subsumed into those IMO.

From another thread:

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
I can cope without my dream of an enormous world map if i can have my ethnolinguistic evolution!

As far as I can tell from your ethno-linguistic ideas, about 1/3 of them are already included in the culture / Ethnic Group model, about 1/3 are not too much of a stretch from where we are now, and the remainder seem either too detailed or more difficult to implement than they're worth. (All IMO of course )

It is important to get input from Rodrigo, who designed the social model, and Vovan, who is coding it, on these issues. If they buy into your ideas similarly to me, then it looks like you could get most of what you want. Input from the other team members would be included also.

[yellowdaddy]

i s'pose one thing i was envisaging was, that Nation X might go to war with Nation Y and Nation Z.

Nation X has the same or similar language to Nation Y, but the language of Nation Z is unrelated t oany other in the game.

Both NAtion Y and Nation Z have technology or some information - map info for example that Nation X wants or needs.

When Nation Y is conquered by Nation X, it can acquire the technology or info, because the language is intelligible. But when nation Z is conquered and destroyed by NAtion X, all the Tech knowledge or info is lost, becauase the language is unintelligble and there is no way of acquiring it.

ok, it's a little complex, but i like it, because :

a. it adds realism, which doesn't seem incompatible with the political depth that you seem to be interested in.

b. it adds an extra strategic dimension to the way you play, so it can affect the way you play, either you can adopt a more sophisticated approach to get the info, through political manoeuvring, or you can not care and just nail 'em anyway.

in summary, it makes the game less of a resource and military free-for-all, where all you need to focus on is locating, controlling and exploiting resources and piling on as many military units as possible to progress through conquest.

i would be disappointed if the game was centred around military conquest. and not some social and poltitical management as it seems.

yes i think having translators is unneccessary. but i still think that each civ should have to acquire languages through some active process, to steer away from homogenised tribes.

If so, I'd rather abstract the whole knowledge of foreign languages in a civ as a single "slider" rather than techs, since these require constant education/upkeep. I'd rather abstract that and let it be a part of the spying costs. I can't see how languages alone are important in cultural conquest. Religion is much more important IMO, and the ethnic group already represents enough to manage that.

i more or less agree with this. having thought about it, i think language is only ONE of the features of both economic and cultural conquest.

4. language should be a fetaure of an EG which increases it's potential for insurgency/trerrism, and seperatism, and colluding with an enemy.

I agree it could be a feature of the EG, but unless languages are shared by more than one EG, they will not provide anything useful.

i disagree, the basques, are a language isolate, and the language is part of their identity and part of the reason they fight.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

what about these ideas?

A. ethnic maps

i'd like to see coloured ethinc and language distribution maps, as an overlay, so you can see where they all are.


B. dialects, language evolution, language splitting,

if your empire is too large and dipersed, then new dialects, languages and hence EG's should emerge - didn't this happen with the Roman Empire?!
[it's sort of happened with the British empire too, but only as far as accents really],


C. language merger:

if you conquer an area with a strong language [i.e. it could be an ethnic groupe divide between many nations but still in total having a large population - take the Kurdish people or the Zhuang in Guanxi for example] then your "governor" language should gradually influence this "governed" language, to create over time a new dialect or language.

[LDiCesare]

i disagree, the basques, are a language isolate, and the language is part of their identity and part of the reason they fight.

Yes but you can model basques as a distinct ethnic group (different from Latins, Celts, Iberians and whatever followed) without needing a language. Your point is valid, however, in that the language being unrelated to other nearbt (indo european) languages helped the basques retain their originality. So language could be a part of an ethnic group which would help/hinder merging with other ethnic groups. Thus a shared language helps spying/relations, whereas an isolated language helps cultural resistance.
As for gaining the tech when conquering, it is a good idea: If conquered people had literacy, you will be able to profit from it only if you issue a policy of linguistic tolerance, at least over a given period. Links to tech model needed...

About ethnic maps, yes it would be cool. It is quite hard to make a nice map of several mingled ethnicities, so it would have to be a simplified representation (like most represented EG in square, or show extent of given ethnicity). I can't see that being coded soon, however.

Language evolution: There is already a model for EG evolution/splitting. The idea would be that when an EG changes, there is also a variation in its language. I think that is you can put a model for it, it's feasible.

Language merger: I am not sure that level of detail provides something. I don't know how you could explain the effects. If you can explain how the game will tell the player that a language has been influenced by another, then OK. If the modified language becomes different enough that the conquered people no longer consider themselves as part of their old ethnicity, but neother part of the conqueror's, then OK.

[yellowdaddy]

i think i would just say that an ethnic group would have an extra "sense of identity" point for having a dialect or language, and increased points for the scale of that difference.

say for arguments sake it was on a scale of 0-5
where

0 = an accent: same language, but still a seperate EG
1 = a related dialect
2 = a closely related language
3 = a distantly related language, and related culture
4 = a distantly related language, but unrelated culture
5 = a completely unrelated language

this is just a tentative list,but something similar.
the higher the point, the higher the cultural resistance as you put it.

..........................................

language merger,

i'm thinking of how, if one languge area is conquered by another language speaking group and the original language becomes modified - (without needing to go into whether that's grammer or vocab!).

i'm thinking of a model which would allow the latin languages - French, Spanish, Romanian etc.. evolve as distinct new EG's following Roman/Latin occupation.

we could say on a scale of x number of years - the romans took around 400 years to precipitate the start of these new languages - but this should depend on the "ethnolinguistic tolerance" factor - how much effort a conquerer puts into integrating its subjugated population.,

oui?

[roquijad]

Wow. Impressive lobby for languages, yellowdaddy...

The original model, the one I took over a looooong time ago, had races. There was at least the idea of including languages too (maybe languages were there too).

At that time there was a very little discussion about languages. I felt they were unnecessary, added little extra fun, didn't worth the effort. At that time, no one opposed much. So languages were put aside. I suppose no one cared so much about it as you do.

Despite your lobbying, I still think we don't need them. I don't think they're such a key factor. But that's just me.

As for races, I really wanted them to be in the game, but at the end it was put aside too. The thing is, race is mostly important in game terms when you want to have discrimination and/or slavery. And we do have them, but in ethnic grounds.

Should we re-think things and include races and languages? Maybe. But let's be very practical:
Already the social scenario is incredibly complex. You have different ethincities, which in time can show different social behaviours from province to province. Also, they can follow different religions. And on top of that, divisions by social classes. And yet more: different political views.

It's no exageration to say that with the current model you can have a palestinian muslim aristocracy, pro-monarchy and that's different from other palestinians in the same province who are christians, belong to a workers class, are less aggressive, more ascetic and are communists.

Think how combinations explode when you add in races and languages.

For sure, that would be even more realistic. And believe me, I love realism. But I feel we've come to a point where the social scenery is so complex that players will have to make some serious effort to understand what kind of people they have under their control. Tha game will certainly need a few social browsing tools helping players understand things.

[yellowdaddy]

i hear what you say, and i concede that the real effects of languages and races are not necessarily going to be huge in impact when factored into your model.

however.

it could be a mistake to discount the importance of their appeal when it comes to the cosmetic aspects of the game.

without them, your model is essentially a one race, one language model. What about all the different races of people who might be into playing in a nationalistic kind of way? I think it's be crap without having languages and race, and faces of all the in game characters - other wise it's too texty and statisticky... yawn!

race and language features can add intangible interest to the game.

you could strip away each indivdual aspect of each model and argue it away as unnecessary, if you really wanted to, but the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

i'm yet to be convinced that languages are less important than religion.

i think religion is partly a cosmetic feature too

i also believe that cosmetic aspects to any game are very important (finish, and style etc...) - as are having characters, and creating a simulated world as well as having all the resource, political and military features - just having faces for your characters can make a real difference in how you feel, as can having interesting and some appropriately colourful graphics if at all possible.

It's no exageration to say that with the current model you can have a palestinian muslim aristocracy, pro-monarchy and that's different from other palestinians in the same province who are christians, belong to a workers class, are less aggressive, more ascetic and are communists.

yes, but think how much better it will be with faces for leaders, and linguisitc affinity, so that their spies are more effective in israel than in turkey

I feel we've come to a point where the social scenery is so complex that players will have to make some serious effort to understand what kind of people they have under their control.

I think the sort of people who are attracted to this game WANT to see features both AI and cosmetic that other games of this type simply never have.

Should we re-think things and include races and languages? Maybe. But let's be very practical: Already the social scenario is incredibly complex. You have different ethincities, which in time can show different social behaviours from province to province. Also, they can follow different religions. And on top of that, divisions by social classes. And yet more: different political views.

ethnicity is defined by language and race as well as OCCASIONALLY by religion. I just don't see how having language is any different from having religion. they both have varying degrees of importance from one society to another, and inspire the same kinds of behaviours, as far as i can see.

if you don't like them, make them selectable, but keep them in for those who want them - there are those who would feel equally divided over things like military control methods, and whether to have aliens or not

i think this game will improve it's chances of success by maintaining it's "broad church" appeal, imagine what a sequel could be like!

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i am keen on simulation aspects, of course.

which has lead me to think about food, and animals...

how the injuns were knee-deep in bison, and how their extermination by european settlers messed up the whole indian economy effectively. how asians eat rice, and europeans eat whet - to what extent is this going to feature (beyonnd the tradein coffee, spices and sugar)?

[LDiCesare]

if you don't like them, make them selectable, but keep them in for those who want them

You forget that coding that stuff takes (precious and rare) time, so coding something that will be used only by half of the players but which will probably eat up memory and resources anyway is not something I'd like.

I disagree on the relative importance of religion vs. language. What's the linguistic equivalent of Crusades? Jews in Israel are more united by religion than by language, even though their sacred texts are in a common language, many of them didn't speak the tongue when they decided to move.

I think overall, language can be a characteristic of an EG, which wouldn't cause the EG to split or whatever, but could be tracked in order to know whether the EG wants to keep its identity or will allow itself to be merged into another group. I don't think the level of detail of evolution of languages/merging needs be precised, as to me the model already manages merging/mingling of EGs, and language is just an aspect which can make mergning/mingling easier or harder.

[yellowdaddy]

You forget that coding that stuff takes (precious and rare) time, so coding something that will be used only by half of the players but which will probably eat up memory and resources anyway is not something I'd like.

i know this, but i think this is worth doing, and i think it won't annoy people, i think it's a nice touch.

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What's the linguistic equivalent of Crusades?

any of the scenarios where a liguistically mixed state has sought to eradicate the other languages present:

UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, China, Japan, Burma, are all examples, and there are others.

- the Japanese during their pre-WW2 occupation of Korea actively tried to delete the Korean language from history, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, and think of themselves as Japanese.

In other cases it's both language AND religion, as in former Yugoslavia, Scotland, Ireland, Kurdistan, the Americas, and also economic in Aceh and Moluccas in Indonesia.

look at how language motivates Quebeckers: dictating their immigration stance, and allegedly motivating them to terrorism, as it does to an extent in Ireland and the Basque country,

what has the Welsh, Breton, Quebec and Basque conflicts got to do with religion?

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I think overall, language can be a characteristic of an EG, which wouldn't cause the EG to split or whatever, but could be tracked in order to know whether the EG wants to keep its identity or will allow itself to be merged into another group. I don't think the level of detail of evolution of languages/merging needs be precised, as to me the model already manages merging/mingling of EGs, and language is just an aspect which can make mergning/mingling easier or harder

yes, i agree. I'm not saying it should CAUSE a tribe to split, but, as language is one of the main things that defines ethnicity it provides a framework.

e.g.:

[language group]
Celts

[Tribes which split off from "Celts"]
Goidelegs,
Brythonegs
Celtiberians
Galatians
Gauls

["nations" or EG's which can split off from tribes]
Goideleg - Irish
Brythoneg Welsh

are two "distantly related" ELGs


whereas


Goideleg - Irish
and
Goideleg - Scottish

are two "closely related" ELGs
Helvetians

if the pattern's the same for all the groups of EG's then it's convenient.[