Ethnic Evolution

[yellowdaddy]

right, here's a messy idea of some of my racial character faces. i'll have to do two posts, and then start ranting...

[yellowdaddy]

some head shapes!

all these faces are derived from the top left one, which is loosely based on my face.

i'd like to see some mixing up of racial features should one ethnic group merge with another.

please see my example of the division of the asians into

a. Peoples

and
b. 6 tribes for each people

the nations would evolve from city names, personal names - like a leader, or from a small vocabulary in a main representative of the ethnolinguiistic group.

NB ii'v defined the ethnic groups by language group - as they would/should be initially.

there are around 70 altogether each divided into 6.

the european ones are a little less alien sounding! but really most of the european ones should come under Indo-European or something like that.

i hope people will be interested enough in my ideas ofethnolinguistic evolution to discuss them as a game concept in this thread.

Jack

P.S. I can cope without my dream of an enormous world map if i can have my ethnolinguistic evolution!

P.P.S. have i discussed the sim city managment/arcade battelfield ideas yet?

[yellowdaddy]

nation builder

please explore this link and the links from it, and add your thoughts about it.

http://jendaveallen.com/builder/nation/users.html

or

http://jendaveallen.com/builder/nation/nation.html

i hope this link will be a source of inspiration for those coding the various models on this game. this program certainly seems to offer ideas that would appeal to those who like the simulation potential for this game.

i hope it adds some new ideas to the game.

jack

[Mark_Everson]

Re: some head shapes!

Hey Jack:

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
all these faces are derived from the top left one, which is loosely based on my face.

The face creator is cool! It matches reasonably well with what we'd had in mind for the characters model. You can track down those discussions by starting on the Characters page on the web site if you're interested. I'd want to see some of the bolder lines smoothed out and made more like a face in a cartoon frame for the final version, but your stuff is a really great start!

P.S. 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.

(I will also cross-post this into the thread where you discussed the ideas themselves.)

[yellowdaddy]

groovy,

.

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 )

well getting a third of what i want is pretty good considering.

i'm happy to modify my ideas, i'd just like to debate them a bit to see the "hows" and "whys", i'm no coder, but i'm interested in understanding at least the outlines of what is and isn't, can and can't be etc...

perhaps i should come back with some modifications and and some clearer explanations.

essentially, the idea is based on trying to have a little more realism - i realise that some people like to play famous nations i think the ethno-evolution idea is perhaps for one of a selection of scenarios.

i imagine you'll be featuring things like an Alexander the Great scenario, and an American Civil war scenario, things like that. this is perhaps rather like an attempt at an accurate "evolution of the nation/cultures of the world" scenario. it's irritated me a bit that you'd be playing the romans against the french in Civ, when one is desceded from the other.

the core feature i was hoping for was one where tribes are part of an ethno-linguistic set [i put them in sixes for convenience] - which is fairly accurate as a concept, really. Then that, being an EG was really just a stage of development into a tribe - which is kind of like when in CIv, part of your Ciiv can revolt and form a functioning barbarian civ, except this time it has a name, and ethnolinguistic affiliation...
(eg, the Chinese are related to the Burmese, i'm not sure how to find a use for this, except for in the racial feature of the faces, because the Japanese is a lot more intelligible to Chinese than Burmese even though it's not related, it might also tie in with the espionage points and things)
...and is not just a generic barbarian civ.


i've also been thinking about the economic effects of language... language is part of cultural and economic conquest, from roman times to the present day with tv and internet. it's why everybody on this webboard is using english for example!
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modifications of the city management idea... couldn't we just have the players capital city ONLY as a sim city style city management screen? instead of a palace screen and all the view city screens for each city - just have you capital only like a simplified version of Caesar3?
you could add bits to your palace there, and stick all your wonders in one screen? so then people might compete for the biggest capital - after all most empires have a large capital which sort of reflects their empire.

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thoughts about tiles: how about a jigsaw? it might help make squiggly coastlines, and it can still work on a grid. i liken the debate on hexes and funny polygons to ow hexagon and asymetricl joysticks mightn't really be so user friendly.

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

food. i was thinking about this a little too... are you going to have generic food, or regional/tradeable food?
and will you bother with domestication of different types of animals, or any animals, being invloved in the game?

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

I'd want to see some of the bolder lines smoothed out and made more like a face in a cartoon frame for the final version, but your stuff is a really great start!

sure, these are just blueprints really, so i can quickly cut and paste and modify, then lay on the fancy stuff after

[yellowdaddy]

I wonder... do you want them to display emotion depending on how the game is going for them as well like in CIV 3?