As I was working on the new player tokens and the AST I realized the following:

All civilizations have their names written singular, like the name of a country.

Persia (not 'The Persian Civilization', or 'The Persians')
Rome (not 'The Roman Civilization', or 'The Romans')
Iberia (not 'The Iberian Civilization', or 'The Iberians')

I think that's the right way to do it.

There is yet one exception: Celts

In my opinion, that should be:
Celt (not 'The Celtic Civilization', or 'The Celts')

The singular word 'Celt' rather than the plural 'Celts' may seem strange, because it is rarely used singular.
Nevertheless I found out this is the right way to use the word.

I've done some research:


This is what Wikipedia says:

So, when you regard all this. the following names should be used for our 18 civilizations:

WEST:
Celt (not 'The Celtic Civilization', or 'The Celts')
Rome (not 'The Roman Civilization', or 'The Romans')
Iberia (not 'The Iberian Civilization', or 'The Iberians')
Carthage (not 'The Carthagian Civilization', or 'The Carthagians')
Hellas (not 'The Hellenic Civilization', or 'The Hellenics')
Minoa (not 'The Minoan Civilization', or 'The Minoans')
Egypt (not 'The Egyptian Civilization', or 'The Egyptians')
Hatti (not 'The Hittite Civilization', or 'The Hattians')
Assyria (not 'The Assyrian Civilization', or 'The Assyrians')

EAST:
Parthia (not 'The Parthian Civilization', or 'The Parthians')
Babylon (not 'The Babylonian Civilization', or 'The Babylonians')
Nubia (not 'The Nubian Civilization', or 'The Nubians')
Persia (not 'The Persian Civilization', or 'The Persians')
Saba (not 'The Sabaean Civilization', or 'The Sabaeans')
Kushan* (not 'The Kushan Civilization', or 'The Kushans')
Indus* (not 'The Indian Civilization', or 'The Indians')
Maurya (not 'The Mauryan Civilization', or 'The Mauryans')
Dravidia* (not 'The Dravidian Civilization', or 'The Dravidians')


*Note 1:
The name 'Kushan' for the civilization may seem an error in this list, but this has been decided to make a difference between this civilization and the 'Kush' civilization who lived near the blue nile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kush

You can read the discussion here:
http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtop ... light=kush



*Note 2:
The Indus is not directly linked to one civilization, rather to the area. There is not ONE famous or dominating civilization during the 8000 years period who lived there, but several. You could say the 'Indians' lived there, though this is something else then the name used for the citizens of the Indian Republic today. (or even the name Columbus gave to the original inhabitans of America when he thought he discovered India). The earliest large civilization that lived in the Indus valley was the Harrapan civilization.

*Note 3:
Dravidia is not directly linked to one civilization, rather to a group of languages spoken in the ascosiated area from no earlier than 500BC.

Oh yeah, the sources used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Celts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

http://www.newworldcelts.org/celtspronounce.htm

Your reasoning seems to make sense to me. Ill agree to that change.

One funny addition:

Since barbarians and pirates are not considered to belong to a civilization or specific homeland, these are not included in my list.

Otherwise it would become:

Barbaria (not 'The Barbarian Civilization', or 'The Barbarians')
Piratia (not 'The Pirate Civilization', or 'The Pirates')

(or the Pirate Party)


When I was researching the subject 'barbarians' for the illustration for the calamity, we linked the barbarians to the Gauls (Asterix and Obelix).

Actually Barbarians are considered any 'unknown foreign people', not nescesarily uncivilized. Still, nowadays, people tend to regard unknown foreign people as uncivilized. I guess it's something humans do.

The word 'Barbarian' is led from 'Bar Bar' that means as much as 'Blah Blah' because the 'unknown foreign people' spoke a language indeciferable.

Oh, since, I'm on the theacher's chair: The word cifre is led from the arabian 'sifr' which means 'zero'. (In Dutch, my native language, the word 'cijfer' is translated 'digit' into english')


Though, piracy in itself isn't funny at all, I find it kinda funny, that piracy is still very recent in the news. Especially at the Nubian and Sabaean coast.

This is what wikipedia says about Piracy:

(yeah, rather than robbery committed at sea WITH permission from a nation.)

Reading more on the subject "Dravidia" I doubt if we should call the civilization in the south of the Indian subcontinent this way.

This is because the Dravidian culture is mainly situated AD.

Wikipedia:

Language:


Culture:

Achitecture:

If I read some more on this subject I find the following:

India:


Harrapa:



Vedic:




Kushan:


Mehrgahr


Mahajanapadas:


It's either:
- Or we accept to play with a culture that actually lived and florished much later than 8000BC or even 250BC

- Or we look for a culture in that same area in an earlier time

I've looked up some maps:

Harrapa:


Mahajapanas:


Merhgahr:

IMHO the names should stay. They did develop later than most of the other western empires but it is still within the time frame of the game.

My research uncovered a lot of various smaller kingdoms - but no real empires - which what almost all of the western civs are. I think we should stick with promenint civilizations that people might have heard of.

I could never find any sort of really prominant southern indian empire/civilization so I settled on Dravidia as the default language/culture. You could call it proto-dravdian I suppose.

Maurya is a much later civ - and could be replaced by Vedic i suppose. I got the impression that Vedic could mean almost anything in india (and outside) though and Maurya was a well known early empire.

You'll actually find the same thing with Parthia - which is basically just Persia Part II.

In the end I came to the conclusion that most of these empires rose and fell at differnt times - in the end as long as they showed up some time during the course of the game time frame they were valid.

Civilization has alwasy been pretty non-historical in that respect. Gameplay trumpts history!

Oh that surely is true.

Even in the west part. The Minoan empire fell soon after thegreat eruption of Thera, The romans rose after the greek declined and so.

I've spent some time to visualize all this using the program 'timeline' on Mac. This program is free to use without license, but you seem to be unabled to output this to an image without a license. So I cannot show it here on the forum.

Nevertheless, visualizing these things really helps understanding, otherwise it's just numbers.

I've created two timelines: an east and a west one.

A overflow covering our game range (8000 BC - 250 BC), and some rough era's: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. (These eras can never be set for all civs. Though europe and India timetables show real differences)

And finally in there I put all 18 civilizations we use so see where the overlaps are and where civilizations follow up eachother.

It actually seems to me that:


- Both the original Avalon Hills civ and our new East part uses civs that mainly are situated in the range 3000 BC - 200 AD.

- All civilizations start in the general Bronze Age or even later

- West shows civs that might start earlier, though East shows civs that last longer (in general)

- Many of the names used for our 18 civs represent a certain period of a civilization living in the ascociated areas, though never can be labeled as THE ONE in that region.

- Though mentioned in my previous posts I no longer think some of the 18 civilizations fall out of place. Some might seem to fall out order, but compared to the total of 18 civs, this is not this obvious.


I doubted about renaming 'Indus' to 'Harrapa', but in this general naming thing like desribed above, especially the last point, Harrapa might be THE ONE, or SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANTS, in that region, but since we don't seem to go for that option, there is no need to be this specific.

We are used to 'Indus' yet, It covers it, AND it's an easier and shorter name than 'Harrapa'

OK, So I agree to NOT change names and accept some timeline differences.