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[Teneb]

Soooo... pretty much most of Europe in 769?

Nope. At 769 western Europe was well on its way to recover from the upheaval that was the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The threat of the Muslim Caliphates was also a pretty good motivator for unifying for the Christians... and the rise of strong Christian kingdoms for everyone else. 769 is more or less the end of the so-called Dark Ages. but those weren't called Dark Ages because they were dark, or people were dumb and barbaric, or because of intolerance. They are called Dark Ages because very few people during them bothered to write down stuff and so we know very little of what happened then.

I once took part in a conversation with an Anthropology student who was singing the praises of oral history and its "superiority". It took all I had to not slap him in the face for being an idiot. All it takes is a poorly-time death or someone who dislikes how things actually went enough to alter the story for information to be lost.

[pisskop]

so we should believe this story above by teneb is the unadulterated amd unbiased truth because its written down



the validity of history is in its ability to be verified by concurrent accounts and evidence available, not its medium.

of course oral stories are bad at that ...

[Teneb]

so we should believe this story above by teneb is the unadulterated amd unbiased truth because its written down



the validity of history is in its ability to be verified by concurrent accounts and evidence available, not its medium.

of course oral stories are bad at that ...

You can source written content. You can't source oral content.

Source

[scriver]

Soooo... pretty much most of Europe in 769?

Nope. At 769 western Europe was well on its way to recover from the upheaval that was the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The threat of the Muslim Caliphates was also a pretty good motivator for unifying for the Christians... and the rise of strong Christian kingdoms for everyone else. 769 is more or less the end of the so-called Dark Ages. but those weren't called Dark Ages because they were dark, or people were dumb and barbaric, or because of intolerance. They are called Dark Ages because very few people during them bothered to write down stuff and so we know very little of what happened then.

I once took part in a conversation with an Anthropology student who was singing the praises of oral history and its "superiority". It took all I had to not slap him in the face for being an idiot. All it takes is a poorly-time death or someone who dislikes how things actually went enough to alter the story for information to be lost.

I still feel the description "tribes of villages making pottery" is pretty well fitting.

[Tawa]

What's up with the weird obsession I keep seeing with wanting to play theocracies? I swear, every time DLC comes up someone on a forum thread or Reddit post brings up wanting to play as a theocracy. Do these people not know how the game works or something?

[Loud Whispers]

What's up with the weird obsession I keep seeing with wanting to play theocracies? I swear, every time DLC comes up someone on a forum thread or Reddit post brings up wanting to play as a theocracy. Do these people not know how the game works or something?

Prolly people who played as Caliph then got super salto playing as Kings not getting to call Crusades whenever they felt like it

[hector13]

What's up with the weird obsession I keep seeing with wanting to play theocracies? I swear, every time DLC comes up someone on a forum thread or Reddit post brings up wanting to play as a theocracy. Do these people not know how the game works or something?

Prolly people who played as Caliph then got super salto playing as Kings not getting to call Crusades whenever they felt like it

Pfft, vassal Pope fixes everything.

[scriver]

Norsepope fixes everything.

[pisskop]

conquest counts as a religious war, yes/no?

if no, a box of 4-5k troops should be able to raze rome and then dow the pope and conquest it?

[Persus13]

I still feel the description "tribes of villages making pottery" is pretty well fitting.

Its the kind of thing that's technically true, but not exactly accurate. Europe in 769 had had the Roman Empire. Sure that was gone, but people still knew about it, and the legacies of that was all around them. And sure, Europe was a backwater compared to Byzantium and the Middle East, but they still had unique stuff, tech and history. Japan in 769 was a backwater to China, and the only significant thing it had developed was pottery. They were in the middle of the Nara period, so they were just beginning to copy the Chinese, but you don't have any of the things that make Japan unique yet.

[umiman]

Yeah, it's extremely difficult to describe how backwards Japan was all the way up to the Meiji Restoration. It's a fallacy to think all "backwards" people are cut from the same cloth. Europe was going through a period of upheaval yes, but it had millennia of technology, culture, and religion behind it. There were established laws, ethics, infrastructure, and huge populations.

Japan was really kinda in primitive times at that point, and was only just beginning to discover "modern" civilization by borrowing from the Chinese. They were in a state comparable to the people of the Indus region. A proto-civilization stage, perpetually 500 years behind everyone else. In a Civilization game, it'd be like they just discovered Writing and Pottery, but China is giving them free tech every once in awhile.

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Edit: Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm bashing the place too much. Japan is pretty cool and they accomplish some seriously amazing things later on.

[Karnewarrior]

Yeah, it's extremely difficult to describe how backwards Japan was all the way up to the Meiji Restoration. It's a fallacy to think all "backwards" people are cut from the same cloth. Europe was going through a period of upheaval yes, but it had millennia of technology, culture, and religion behind it. There were established laws, ethics, infrastructure, and huge populations.

Japan was really kinda in primitive times at that point, and was only just beginning to discover "modern" civilization by borrowing from the Chinese. They were in a state comparable to the people of the Indus region. A proto-civilization stage, perpetually 500 years behind everyone else. In a Civilization game, it'd be like they just discovered Writing and Pottery, but China is giving them free tech every once in awhile.

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Edit: Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm bashing the place too much. Japan is pretty cool and they accomplish some seriously amazing things later on.

You know, one thing I kinda dislike about Civ is that there's no rubber-banding. It'd go a long way towards not making tech-focus the only way to not get curb-stomped by musketmen.

[Sheb]

What's up with the weird obsession I keep seeing with wanting to play theocracies? I swear, every time DLC comes up someone on a forum thread or Reddit post brings up wanting to play as a theocracy. Do these people not know how the game works or something?

Because a lot of important player from the era, from the pope to prince-bishops of the HRE to leader of holy orders to the head of large monastic orders were religious people, and it'd be cool to play them?

[Tawa]

What's up with the weird obsession I keep seeing with wanting to play theocracies? I swear, every time DLC comes up someone on a forum thread or Reddit post brings up wanting to play as a theocracy. Do these people not know how the game works or something?

Because a lot of important player from the era, from the pope to prince-bishops of the HRE to leader of holy orders to the head of large monastic orders were religious people, and it'd be cool to play them?

I understand this, but Christian theocracies do not follow any sort of dynastic lineage, and moreover, since priests are not allowed to marry and have children, it would be impossible to continue your lineage anyway. They got around elections with merchant republics, but theocracies are already reliant on members of noble dynasties being elected into them, meaning that there's no easy way around the elective succession and it would be utter hell trying to incorporate support for playing them.

[Criptfeind]

It seems like you're binding your hands with artificial rules a little bit there, is it really necessary to the game that it include the dynastic element? I agree it's certainly a big part of the game and the experience would potentially be lessened without it, but it seems like it wouldn't at least be hard to make possible to play. You don't loose anything from making it possible to play a theocracy, even if it doesn't have the same number of interesting systems as the other groups you can play as. People who need these systems can just not play as them, whereas those who want to play as them can.