What is the most autistic thing you have ever done that is vaguely related to history.
When I was a freshman in high school I used make really shitty maps that would show changing political borders. I never wrote down anything about my imaginary continent but I still look back and cringe
>>219043
Oh I still do that friend. As an adult out of university. I enjoy thinking about political and historical events through the lens of realistic fantasy.
>>219043
Please
I wrote up whole histories for my fake continent, including fakes kings, their reigns, and their accomplishments.
I worked on it for 2 whole years all throughout high school instead of taking notes in class to pass the time. I still have them in a draw somewhere, some 50 pages of notes and scribbles.
>>219043
I read way more into my games of civilization than the rules and common sense dictate.
>>219043
I would literally get an erection when watching some historic maps. Especially if it involved a weakening country such as the Ottoman Empire over the centuries.
I still have no idea what the fuck was wrong with me.
>>219062
Maybe you had a past life blood feud with the Ottoman Empire and their suffering still pleases you.
>>219043
>Sankeks
>Tyraq
I've been making Civilization IV mods as a one-person projects for like 8 years now. Two of them scrapped but the third one finally nearing completion. All that time I could've spent on pursuing my other interests, vanquishing my enemies or closing the rift said projects have inflicted upon my relationship... but no.
>>219111
what does the mod do
>>219043
>Fenzi Confed's fucking abysmal borders
>>219043
Aw shit. I did that too. Maximum autism.
>>219123
they aren't well defined
>>219137
Even with a huge margin of error it looks like it's trying to eat Oramos a la white blood cell style.
It's being officially fucking annexed by a joint Persephony/Imperial invasion
>>219152
literally in the next two maps
>>219152
Why the fuck hasn't the empire conqured the tribal lands yet?
Christ that's a lazy empire.
>>219152
>>219158
>>219163
the fucking sanskerks are annoying and required a lot of men tribals were no threat and an easy border to hold
>>219158
>>219164
Mother fucker I was editing it.
>>219164
>empire getting blow the fuck out by the sandkeks
>>219179
gets worse
>>219198
gonna just post a couple more then go to bed
>>219201
>>219202
>>219203
Muslims incoming
>>219205
>>219201
inb4 empire gets vassalized by keks
>>219206
>>219208
>>219212
last one as you can see kinda got lazy
>>219216
why is uff kalif flicking off kaifar?
>>219216
some schism supposed to be like cordoba
>>219043
Those continents are Civ V tier
When i was a kid and would have a bath, the shampoo would leave a very slow foam on the water surface. I used to blow and move it about and pretend it was the continents of a planet, and that i was a God watching in super speed the movement and drift of the continents, and sometimes moving them myself.
I was a weird kid.
I like to research premodern cities, especially ones that are poorly designed (eg Medieval London) or during a time they were just being built, and I like redesigning them in detail, including working out sanitation, optimal layouts for roads, etc.
It's sort of like Minecraft, but on paper.
Wasted unknown hours doing that, filled up a big book full of them.
Not entirely a waste I suppose, I've learned a lot of math I didn't understand in highschool or college. Also have a better understanding of city planning. But I can't ever explain to anyone in real life how, and can't use it to show off any knowledge.
I need to burn the book soon too, in case I die and can't explain myself to whoever finds it. I'd rather have people think I wasted my life masturbating than that level of autism. I drew little tiny houses and shit, just full blown autism.
>>219339
i find that quite interesting desu
I actually gave a speech in speech class about how the Christian influence on America was terrible. and secularism was the way to go. It was back in the day, and I got a somewhat bad grade, maybe for being an autist. Although, in other classes my speeches were recognized as top notch and nice examples of political propaganda, albeit my teachers hated on me for not writing them down, when that would have earned a perfect grade.
I'm scribbling out a continent in my notebook right now (Or a while ago at least)
If I wasn't on my Macbook i'd link it, but in essence it's just a Fantasy world with one expansionist empire, a few ethnicities of Not!-gypsies, one meritocratic trade empire that's poised to get torn apart by civil war, and two peaceful isolationist kingdoms that want nothing to do with all these lesser races.
>>219339
you should be proud, call it art and people will love it. Just make sure it's pretty. Seriously that sounds really worthwhile
>>219043
Been there, done that.
I did it a lot up until my first year in college.
I love drawing, but I love drawing imaginary maps even more.
Sue me
ps:Your map sucks desu
>>219319
I did that too. I also imagined it was human civilization, and watched it spread and branch and dissipate.
>>219339
Where do you even find such detailed maps for old cities?
I remember I tried to "reconstruct" the map of the old town in my city, especially the walls and moat surrounding it. There were some lakes and structures left that indicated how it was shaped (the wall is largely preserved). I was disappointed when I discovered it was well known already after I found very detailed maps of the medieval city. But the disappointment didn't last long since I was very intrigued by the map I found. I was about 10 then.
Man I could and still can watch maps for hours. If that's not autism then I don't know what is.
I made up almost an entire country's history once.
When it formed, what was there before, what were the rulers names, what they did, generals and their ingenious tactics, technological advancements... the list goes on. National animal, flag and even a language (sort of), ethnicity name. Basically went full autism on it.
>>219043
Basically you could make a civilization thread about this. I'm sure that more than half of /his/ would be willing to play.
I do that OP
I also create cities in my head
I also imagine commanding both small and large battles
I personally enjoy small ones where you know all the men you're leading
I also imagine equipping these men with better armour and weapons
I wish a was a baron or something anons ;_;
>>219043
I half did that. I'd try to draw landmasses that looked plausible with plate tectonics under the impression I'd one day take a good map and make either a book or a video game out of it.
>>219043
Nothing wrong with a bit of worldbuilding. I mean, ok the results are childish, but you did it when you were a kid.
>>220353
I tought I was the only autistic than did this.
>>220353
>The next Mount & Blade probably won't generate names for the (non-hero) lads in your party or make them distinct individuals in any way
>>220512
Y-yeah, when I was just a kid
>>219043
I sometimes think about hours on end of creating a new militaristic religion and using the converts to create a new empire.
I've been working on a country attached to Greenland for 2 or 3 years now, I often forget that it isn't real since I force its role into every world event that I think about (and think about it a total of maybe 2 hours a day), everything is contextualized and viewed from the perspectives of the nation's people. When I play dota 2 I speak the language on mic then banter people in a thick accent when they tell me to speak English.
Sometimes I pretend to be a tourist from the nation around strangers since I'm American and most people wouldn't know if it's a real country or not and handsome foreigners are SOCOOL. I've also (in American form) discussed the politics of the nation with drunk rednecks in bars and they form their own opinions and probably bring up whatever I told them with other people, embarrassing themselves with nations and events that don't exist.
>>219043
Back in 08 I wrote biographies of my faction leaders in Europa Barbarorum, a Rome Total War mod.
Like as If I was Plutarch or something.
>>221426
Son, change the names and add some magic and you could use that to make a shitty fantasy novel and put it on Amazon. Just add sex and gore and niggas will buy it.
>>221426
>The eldest child and only son.
I mean, that is technically true...but redundant.
I wanted to build a fantasy world but found that as I wrote detailed histories for the peoples living in it, magic/fantasy became more and more of a tumor to the project.
So it devolved into making up fake religions, republics, schisms, wars, customs, usurpers, monuments, last stands, pop culture, trade routes, kings, etc. for the sake of writing fictional history.
>>219111
Huge Civ fan, though I play mostly Civ V. What kind of mods did you develop?
Does fucking everyone inside here play Civ V?
Any Deity regulars or experienced multiplayer people?
We need a /his/ Civ V group.
>>219339
you're not fucking franz kafka
painting little houses is not autistic, autism spectrum disorder is autistic
I spent at least 60 hours of the last 7 days using Mount and Blade Warband to recreated how the Crusades should have gone down
>>219062
Same here, to be honest. Pic related.
Why do you think it's autistic when it's really what a good portion on /tg/ does all day?
Its great fun
>>221426
I've done the same thing with my family trees in Crusader Kings, but that's because you get more interpersonal drama and politics of ruling.
Way way way back in the day I used to read soc.history.what-if all the time (I wonder if anyone else here even knows what USENET is). There were so many amazing threads that after USENET died I'd go back and browse through it on Deja (and then Google Groups when they acquired it).
>>219043
>fenzi confed
>great sankerks
>tyraq
>Are you me? : The thread
Dressed as a victorian boy for a few teenage years.
Kneesocks and newsboy cap.
Called everyone sir/mam, said 'Good day' instead of hello
...Am grill *shot*
>>222421
I need pics.
For research.
>>223281
Sorry, I grew up. I now wear suits and ties and who the f am I kidding I still wear shorts/kneesocks combo with waistcoat and tie. But at least I talk normally now..
Not too keen on putting pics of myself online, would an illustaration do?
My very own exceedingly shitty map, turned itno an MS paint masterpiece.
>>219072
CAN I JOIN IN
>>219062
Have you ever played Crusader Kings 2?
>>223641
I know this is 4chan, but I'm not jacking off to a cartoon, sorry.
>>223860
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=victorian
:^)
>>223684
I'm flattered, but will have to decline as I somehow aquired a boyfriend, who also dresses finely at times and enjoys my reverse-trap qualities.
But here you go, idealized teenage likeness og me. My idols were Oscar Wilde, Rudolph Valentino, and Naoto Shirogane.
>>221753
Yeah, Crusader Kings is better in that regard.
In TW, I just make up shit based on Character's battles, traits, retinue & buddies, and his family
>>219043
using this pic for my fantasy novel OP, ty
t.
graphic novelist
I made an entire wikipedia style website just for a campaign I used to play in Medieval 2 Total War as France I think. It included every battle, general, war and everything that happened in the game. I think I wrote more than I played.
>>219043
Holy shit I thought I was alone about this. I used to do it on pen and paper even before I had a computer, using a god damned eraser for changing borders.
This is the only map I seem too have left on my computer, I would start with the emergence of the first civilisation and keep going until I got to our level of technology or until I got bored and then start a new one, keeping all the history and cultures and play out battles (without my self really knowing how they were going to turn out at the start of them) and stuff in my head. It would get more complex and realistic every time with my knowledge of history, civilization, technology, military campaigns etc getting better.
I also remember at one point making my own fantasy universe where the first civilization was basically elves but the twist was that they came to earth in a crashed spaceship and had to start from scratch, with what they later would think of as magic actually being technical artefacts surviving from the original space ship. Also my version of orcs where some kind of neanderthal like creatures.
(I had to shrink the picture a lot to upload it so it looks like crap, the original resolution being 11352x5568)
>>219043
I too like to do this kind of stuff, though I base myself hardcorely on actual history (though sometimes combining events that were not contemporary) and real world geography. I don't do this kind of pseudo-historical fantasy because I'm too autistic to approve most alt history.
Everyone in this thread should go to /tg/.
>>224109
This is a shit map.
What I did (and still do) was plan out the defense of a certain locale. I had notebooks with a little castle drawn on the cover and I drew little spearmen in the most vulnerable parts. I also imagined where to deploy soldiers to defend a certain piece of the city.
I created my own alphabet and tried to start a few conlangs, stopped when my Latin teacher looked at some stuff I put on the back of a quiz.
I did/do this shit too.
For me thought it was vidya games, especially ones that were underdeveloped I would just go in and start making all kinds of shit up.
In this case it was FF12, I felt the world map was underwhelming so I made another continent that didn't have any Humes. I also had this whole story for it, don't really remember much about that though.
I masturbated to the fact I was marrying off my princesses in Medieval II Total War
This was about 2 months ago.
>>219339
you should 100% try and get that somehow published anon, even if just as a paper
Gookmoot, please fix 4chan for mobiles. I wrote so fucking much but I lost everything.
>TL;DR
Me and my friends did like OP and have been working on a project for over a year which started non-serious (it was actually a parody of an autistic steam player we know) but grew into a massive universe.
The storylines are engaging and the universe is in my opinion top notch. I've read tons of fantasy books and autismo'd on their respective wikis. I can with confidence say this inside joke has turned into something great. Maybe I will sell our universe to some autistic indie developer or something.
>>219339
Shut the fuck up. If you die and people only remember you as an autist masturbating NEET nobody will give a shit. If you die and they find a little book full of well-planned cities, maybe they'll at least remember you as an interesting NEET.
>>224617
I also do this kind of shit where I just make up different nations and timelines that let them come into existence.
>>224626
I got rock hard when I accepted a vassalage demand last week.
>>224626
I always get rock hard when flirting with girls in Sims 3 tbqh
I wish I had as much dedication towards anything as some of the people in this thread, you people are inspiring.
>>224646
For example in this one Nikola Tesla inherited an enormous amount of money in 1915 after his friend a Russian noble and businessman died without any heirs and hated by his family. He uses the money to buy the Balearic Islands, all of them, from the Spanish Crown and set up a highly industrialized society. This map though is from WW2 after the Spanish civil war forced his nation (he died in 1930 due to the increased strain of both running a country and inventing improvements for it) to invade the mainland.
It was a pretty neat little story.
>>219043
I like to pretend some day I might make a RFC mod for Civilization. Here are the provinces for my proposed Northern Europe map.
>>224682
This one is for a story I started a few weeks ago about a princess that's imprisoned by her brother but gets broken out by an insane man in the same dungeons who always raves about this fictional world. He takes her up into the mountains and in a lake within a lake he shows her a portal to the world he's from. The eastern section got ignored because the entire novel takes place in that northern area with all the little countries, I really just needed to get a political map going for the place because politics between the city states ends up becoming very important.
I thought I was the only one who did that. Oddly enough I used the continent of Australia as the template and named my civilization "Tuscaninia"
>>219043
One of the friends of my cousin is one of those Hotep-type black nationalists (Think "we was kings", with some misogyny and anti-religion stuff thrown in)
I had a big argument with him over the historicity of Christ, where he argued that all the early sources on Christ existing were made up and that nothing I presented was real proof. He then argued that I fell for a massive conspiracy to keep people enslaved through religion and brought in all his friends to circlejerk over how "brainwashed" I was.
>>219043
I still do this today. I even think up histories and motivations for the states in the world, religions they follow, ideologies that appear, rulers and their personalities. It's pretty autistic but worldbuilding has always been one of my favorite things to do ever since I got my first Lego set as a little kid.
/his/ should get together and play Dawn of Worlds sometime. It's a tabeltop where you and your friends are gods and you build a world from scratch.
http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf
>>224728
I did something similar except my basis was a bunch of drunk as fuck aliens come down circa 200 BC and start taking about 1000 people from each major civilization in the Mediterranean and dropping them off in New Zealand and Australia for shits and giggles.
So I had Romans around Canberra, Carthaginians in Perth, Greeks in Auckland and so on.
>>224682
Do you have the blank for this map? Holy shit it's very good and detailed.
I usually use this one, but yours is tonnes better!
>>219043
I make autistic MS paint maps that are sometimes used for collective games. This one's the most recent and a work in progress, though admittedly I haven't done much mapping lately.
>>224763
>>224767
another one
I did this, premise:
>UCLA Berkley gets transported back to 1000 CE
>they eventually do this
.....IDK man.
>>224610
This. My photography teacher, a raging normie, threw away the assignment that I had written my most refined alphabet on. Still mad about it whenever I think about it.
Holy shit I thought I was the only autist who would do shit like this.
All along the sides of every paper throughout high school and college, Teachers and professors never knew, because I'd color in the continent and it'd just look like a random doodle blob.
Dunno why, but the slow, systematic takeover of a country, especially though sudden espionage in which the entire country changed hands in an instant...usually ended up making me incredibly horny. Still does.
>>224811
We're on /his/ because the other boards don't have enough pornographic maps.
>>224798
>>224828
>>224843
Especially great when the overall size of China remains mostly constant, but is then divided into smaller states, which battle it out.
>>224843
you...dirty mare
>>219198
RIP based Qirth ;_;
Incoming blank maps for cartography/ political border fags
>>224889
>>224889
another
>>224889
My favorite map
>>224895
Here's one that I filled in awhile ago and have.
>>224906
You're welcome anon! I'm happy to help those with similar border fetishes as my own.
>>224923
I'm really enjoying that the crimson country (northeastern - central europe) stretches across the Baltic sea. I dig invisible water borders.
>>219043
Who hasn't done that?
You only become a true autist when you go into history from hunter-gatherer migration routes to the industrial revolution, mapping out all the countries/political entities that ever existed, policies that hurt or helped the economy, general cultural attitudes, literacy rates, weather patterns, major wars, weaponry progression, trade routes, ocean currents, etc.
Maybe this is why I have a GED and work minimum wage.
warlight.net
Mine is even more autistic - I majored in geography and used GIS software to semi-professionally digitize a map of a fantasy world I came up with when I was 9.
This was HEAVILY inspired by the Advance War's series.
The countries were all based on names of colors, and were engaged in a WW2 type total war with long fronts and huge formations but with modern weapons. The Blue country was at war with the Red country after the Red country invaded Purple, who was a composite country with ethnic and cultural ties to both Blue and Red (think of Slavic states or Austro-Hungarian Empire). Blue wanted to ensure Purple remained sovereign, while Red did not recognize the legitimacy of some of its borders which were remnants of an earlier empire. Red's leader also had this rivalry with Blue and wanted to provoke Blue into attacking Red first so his brilliant defensive plans could crush Blue, but fucked up by attacking Blue first.
Later on I tried to turn this into an RPG map and came up with a in depth story line explaining the weapons in Star Wars EU tier detail, and developed the campaign as if the ending was already known (Red loses in a spectacular Battle of Berlin type defeat). Red was always the underdog and everything was reported from the perspective of their commander (and benevolent dictator who dindu nuffin), yet I still liked Blue so much I went out of my way to minimize Blue's losses (without making Red look too bad). The other countries, Yellow, Orange and Green are involved but I never really expanded on their roles other than Yellow was a neutral third party superpower like Red and Blue, who mediated some of the conflicts diplomacy.
Countries are sorta like the following:
Blue = Murica
Red = USSR/Nazi Germany
Purple = Poland or France or some poor European country always getting bullied by their neighbors.
Green = Britain or South Korea (Allied with Blue)
Orange = Japan/North Korea/Iran (Allied with Red)
Yellow = China/India
>>219208
SANKERKS BTFO
>>219055
Are you me?
>>225048
I think that the whole colors as nations could be a good teaching tool for explaining hypothetical situations and concepts.
>>224784
>United States of California Los Angeles Berkley
What?
>tfw writing multiple biographies/notes of one fictional emperor from the perspectives of his allies, enemies, distant travelers, diary entries of his lovers, and later in-universe historians/revisionists
So this..is the power...of autism...woah
>>225048
Did you play a lot of pokemon as a child?
>>224784
>tfw in cartography class learning about shitty maps
Did you make this in arcMap? Terrible choice using a color classed DEM terrain layer with what is basically a general purpose political map. You did include a scale bar, and that is on the rubric so you get some points. Everything else is good though.
>got all the call of duty games that took place in WW2
>went through each game, level by level, to figure out the dates of each level
>write them all down in chronological order on paper
>play through the entire series like this, to simulate playing through WW2 as it happened.
also
>some hot chick in my history class in senoir year of highschool asks me to help her with our WW1 shit
>go over to her house with a whole lesson plan I made up myself with maps and battle plans I made that went way too much into detail
>>219055
I want to do something like this but where do you start? The very beginning of the continent's life? Do you go through the origin of life as well? Is this on Earth? I wouldn't know where to start, and if I found out where I'd have to explain what happened before that time and such. I'd be way to autistic about it.
>>225307
>>go over to her house with a whole lesson plan I made up myself with maps and battle plans I made that went way too much into detail
Lad...
You figured it out when you got there and decided to smash instead, right?
>>225269
Yes, and Advance Wars. I also had a HUGE box of crayons (128 colors plebs) and drew gory stick figure army battle scenes before I even knew that war was actually terrible.
>tfw you get a note sent home by your teacher after they noticed your innocent little doodle of POWs getting tortured by sadistic army guys with swastika like symbols on their red helmets
>tfw punishment was I couldn't watch the history channel for a month
Even after I explained that these were rogue Red Fascist Paramilitary troopers and the Blue commandos were trying to rescue the hostages everyone still thought I was a Nazi in 6th grade.
>>221332
I hope that's a copy pasta, for your sake.
>>221332
Be careful, anon.
>>225319
Start by mapping out some of the big, world altering events. Just 1 or two, and start working around how it got to that point, what the ramifications were, etc. As you go from these major events, you eventually have to develope more major events, so on and so forth. You'll eventually need geography to explain how things went down, and when you start going into detail you'll start inventing nations, and their history. You soon will have a full world.
ie. Start with a " Constantinople fell" scenario, as an example, just the concept of a city of that calibre falling, and work out why and what happens next.
I >>224976 started my whole premise off "a mass exodus into the desert" and from there worked out everything over time.
>>225319
Not that guy but I started by drawing tectonic plates.
Blue convergent plates, red divergent plates, and yellow transform plates.
Once those are in place, you put down some landmass. It can be a "pangea" or a few continents.
Follow the plates along the continent(s) to see where they would push/pull/rub and you'll get some nice realistic island chains, coastlines, mountain ranges, faultlines, etc.
Look at where the bits of continent touch fault lines. Blue bits ramming face-first will have huge fuck-off mountains. Red bits pulling apart will have fucktons of lava, or at the least bits of hot earthen interest like volcanoes. Yellow bits rubbing sideways will have smaller mountains, a handful of volcanoes, and tectonic activity like a motherfucker.
Where these lines are in the ocean, similar. Face-on, big mountains, archipelagos and such. Apart, huge-arse trenches and volcanic islands. Across, a few volcanic islands.
Then consider your continental movement. Where plates move together bits rammed each other a long time ago, so make the continents look a little awkward. Where they pull apart there'll be continental drift, so make it look like an eroded puzzle piece pulled off and stick a heap of islands in the middle.
From there, change the pencil bits to look more aesthetically pleasing, then pen them on.
Hold on, I got more
>>225377
The middle of the map is going to be hot and wet and have monsoonal rain. The edges of the map will be colder and possibly drier and have more regular rain.
Now figure out how wet things are. Pick a direction for the wind to generally blow from the water to the land in each continent, or more than one if that's how you want it. Watch it go all the way to the nearest lot of mountains. Bits oceanward of the mountains get regular rain. Bits oceanward of mountains and on the edge of the mountains get lots of rain. Bits inland of the mountains get little rain. The bigger the mountains the more significant this is, so if you've got molehills it won't do a damn, but if you've got the Andes just sitting there one side will be lush and the other a damned desert. Also, the further inland you are, even if there's no mountains, the drier it gets.
>>221332
Is this going to be /his/'s first autism screencap?
>>225393
Once you've got this down, put your general greenery in place. Wetter in non-equatorial areas means more dense forestry e.g. English woods. A little dry means less dense e.g. Australian bush. Proper dry means african-style scrub plains all over the joint. Very dry means desert. DO NOT USE ENGLISH PLAINS AS AN EXAMPLE THEY ARE HUMAN-MADE.
Then, for equatorial areas, wet means ridiculously rainforests, drier means jungle areas, properly dry means flat but with still more trees and superdry means scrub deserts.
Once you've got these down change them for aesthetics and utility then bang them in pen.
Keep in mind NEVER mention this to proper geographers or climatologists since this is simplified to the point of being offensive.
>>225398
baka that's too soft to be screencaped desu senpai
>>225400
Rivers go from mountains to the ocean. That's it. The more rain on your mountain, I.E. the closer to the coast and the higher the mountain, the bigger the river will be. It shoud have tributaries from that mountain and other mountains on the path flowing into the main river, which meanders however you want it to but generally away from high ground to low, to the ocean, where just before the ocean if it's really big it forms a delta. Bits along that river can have canyons and such for geographical points of interest. Bang lakes and shit of whatever size you want down on the way, so long as you don't have the Comically Tiny River as the main source of water for Lake Fucking Huge. If the river doesn't make it all the way to the ocean because it's too far or it goes inland into the deepest part of the place without escape, it forms either a big salt lake, and the lake will be properly salty, or a marsh, depending on your climate or more realistically your preference. If shit's really dry, you can have huge river paths and vast salt lakes with no or nearly no water for interest.
>>225411
In case what I said about prevailing winds doesn't make sense
>>225377
>>225393
>>225411
Thanks for all of this but I was more talking about the history of the place and how everything living came to be and such. I feel like it'd be awkward to start right when a country gets its first king but feel like it'd also be awkward to start where the first people came from and how they got to the area. Maybe I should just start from there.
>>225427
I saw that I was just replying to the person that was describing how to actually make a world.
>>225423
Shh, let him continue!
>>225267
To be honest, this is one of those things that even a decade later in my 20s I still think about without realizing what I'm doing. Every development in the real world since 9/11 (arguably because of 9/11) I would try and incorporate some of it into my fantasy world. Even now, long detached from childish doodlings, I occasionally think, "gee, how would this country respond to this kind of attack?". The war "technically" ended in November 2009 after going on for (3 years fantasy time, real world much longer), but the ending was never in doubt. I kept going back and reinterpreting the 3 year sequence of events in my world through what was happening in the real world. So story wise its stuck in a mental time loop since I grew out of developing it originally long ago.
But yeah, its definitely one of those weird, personal things you hold on to without realizing what you have created. It was just a way to pass the time and daydream and it evolved.
>>219043
This was me all through high school. Now I content myself with making alt-history maps for Paradox games I don't actually have the skill to make as well as I'd like.
>>225443
Oh it's good stuff and I'll remember some of it while making my world but I was just notifying him.
>>224779
Nice. What did you use to make this?
doing creative exercises isn't necessarily autistic.
>>225466
Exactly what I was thinking.
>>225466
Not him but it looks to be pretty obviously made in MSpaint.
>>225471
don't spoil it
people trying to create is the devil these days.
>>225423
You could start from some pivotal moment and explain "how we got here".
Then again, consider that damn near EVERY major civilization began at a "subtropical" latitude. The only exception is the Yellow River in China, and that river is actually rather close to the border between temperate and subtropical zones anyway.
A good place for your humans to start their historic adventures would be an environment similar to prehistoric east africa: tropical rainforests and monsoon forests in close proximity to large, flat plains. I always start simulations here because it's familiar and clearly plausible from our real world.
Remember that humans like to take the path of least resistance. The first colonists aren't gonna be jumping across mountain ranges or storming new climates like it's nothing. They'll follow the coasts and other "safe" ways.
Hold on, I gotta pull up my shit.
>>225476
trolling people in bars isn't autistic.
>>225489
Uh yeah it is homo
I make maps of what I wish the world's borders look like
I've completed the entire world, but I'm always working on little improvements
>>225513
you're wrong, shitposter.
>>225525
No. Pretending an imaginary country exists and forcing it into every days stuff is borderline /tulpa/
Very autistic
>>225537
the trolling part isn't, at least.
>>225481
As long as there are places below 2500m or so, there ought to be traversible valleys somewhere. Generally, though, the presence of mountains slows migration down, since most humans would rather stay on flat, fertile land. It could be that early humans figure out ways across the mountains, but by that time there are already people who came the long way around.
Think about polynesia. Those islands were only settled by humans maybe 3000 years ago, while australia was settled 30,000 years ago and the Americas were settled 20,000 years ago. During the ice age, New Guinea was connected to Australia, and the combined landmass was *almost* connected to southeast Asia; there was a relatively narrow strait which can be seen today in the limits of Australian fauna. 100 miles of sea isn't a problem for primitive man, but that ocean is slightly wider than the Atlantic.
There is also another problem, in that the geography of the area isn't really conducive to a strong seafaring tradition.
Going back to the example of Polynesia, virtually all pacific islanders from Hawaii to New Zealand to even Madagascar (except New Guinea and Australia, which predate them) are descended from an earlier group of people that originally came from Taiwan and began to spread some 3-5000 years ago. The aboriginal Taiwanese first settled in Taiwan around 8,000 years ago, after coming there by boat. Since the Taiwanese all came from a seafaring tradition, they had ample opportunity in the intervening 3,000 years to hone their seafaring skills. I believe that the Taiwanese began to spread from the island when they did because their population began to exceed the island's carrying capacity.
>>225576
I think it's halirious that out there somewhere in the midwest this schizo anon is pretending to be from some imaginary country in Greenland
Haha wtf
Check this guy out.
Creates his own fictional world, continually updates the landmass. Runs dice to see which part of the world gets redrawn at which point, keeps all versions in archives and even has his own end of the world scenario for it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/jerry-gretzinger_n_3749563.html
>>225650
exactly, and getting other people to believe made up events.
>>225646
Based geobro are you stull dumping?
>>225646
Pick out a few directions for your early humans to travel in and mark them clearly. Not everything has to be settled at once. Virgin wilderness HAS existed before.
Rivers don't play a critical role in early human migration, but they are a main driver in collecting populations together with enough density for them to form societies and civilizations. Virtually all major civilizations have sprung up around rivers in either temperate or subtropical regions.
Countries with less defensible borders tend to be more expansionistic. Some examples that come to mind are Russia/Mongolia/Scythia, which had few to no natural barriers except for their own immense size, became expansionist in the extreme; China, which borders desert, jungle, and tundra, historically had comparatively little interest in expansion;
Island (and isolated in general) cultures will typically be much more xenophobic than mainland cultures.
I'd place horse domestication somewhere with wide open plains, and by extension with expansionists who will spread it by trade and sword. But that's getting ahead of myself.
It's VITAL to consider that sort of resources can be found where and in what quantity. It will have ENORMOUS consequences for history.
Shitty iron? Fold it one mirrion times.
Salt scarce? Better sell your mountains of gold and crash economies when you visit your customers on a state visit.
Bland food? Foreign empire cut off trade? Just sail to India for spices! It's totally like 10 miles to the west if we keep sailing...right?
Rival kingdom refuses to take your luxury goods? Sell them addictive drugs and fight over the consequences!
>>225670
Yep
>>219339
Dude that sounds badass. Only some shitty bumble/b/ would say you're autistic, actual people would most likely think you're some kind of fucking genius.
>>225703
Obsidian, where available, was a highly desired material for tool use and acquiring it led to trade networks in the Near East before even the end of the Neolithic. Then there are the organic semi-minerals like Jet and Amber, and perhaps some more obscure ones in our world like Ammolite. My point is here that I'm not just thinking about resources to be used in the equivalent of the Iron Age and then later Industrial eras, but also earlier phases like the Bronze Age and most importantly the Neolithic. And across human history, the availability of resources has affected fundamental aspects of material culture, whilst the drive to acquire desirable resources outside of ones own territory has run the full gamut from colonization to extensive mutualistic trading networks.
Speaking of the Neolithic it's very increasingly likely that YOUR equivalent of the Neolithic revolution is going to be very drastically different.
Given that agriculture arose not only in the Near East but independently in Mesoamerica, the eastern USA, the Andes mountains, West Africa and the Ethiopian highlands, as well as China, it seems incredibly unlikely that agriculture would arise only once or twice.
In a world without a primary meeting ground like the mediterranean sea, aquatic trade would look more like that of the Red Sea and Indian ocean trade.
If longitudinal variation of biomes is great like in the americas, the spread of agriculture will require very adaptable crops. Or else we'll see a system resembling mesoamerica with large scale agriculture largely being restricted to similar climates.
Your crop packages should logically be suitable for places on the fictional map where they can grow in this world.
Generally, regions where insects can breed unhindered and water is typically warm breed disease. Tropical rainforests are usually the most major such areas. Generally speaking, the longer humanity has dwelled in a region, the more diseases have adapted to their presence.
>>225758
Think about who settles in each area and how they relate to their neighbors. And think about what the major tribal groups will be, since those will become the civilizations in the future.
The Indo-European ethnolinguistic group had a territory stretching from Spain to northern India, and eventually spread into the Americas as well. 8000 years ago, however, they were little more than a large tribe of steppe nomads living in what is now eastern Ukraine.
The Sino-Tibetan ethnolinguistic group contains all of China, plus Burma and some tribal parts of India. They originally came from Burma or Thailand, eventually expanding into Tibet and China; one subgroup living in Shandong eventually became the Han Chinese, which assimilated a great many other ethnicities into itself.
The Bantu ethnolinguistic group originally dwelt in Nigeria and Cameroon, until about 1200 years ago when they began spreading south. This little tribe completely overran the southern half of the continent, displacing innumerable other tribes. Today the Bantu represent virtually the entire native population south of Kenya, except in Namibia, northern Botswana, and western South Africa. Genetic studies indicate that some of the tribes they overran might have been the closest relatives of the first modern humans.
The Afroasiatic ethnolinguistic group probably originated in Ethiopia or Arabia, where they spread North to become the ancient Egyptians, crossed the Red Sea to become the Semites, and even took a roundabout route through the desert into Nigeria and became the Hausa. The maritime empire of the Phoenicians and their successor in the Carthaginians were Afroasiatic. Eventually most of these civilizations were displaced by a rapid succession of Greeks, Latins, Persians, and so on. The mostly nomadic Arabian group, however, overran North Africa, the Levant, and the Fertile Crescent once the tribes were united by Muhammed.
>>223783
>Catfolk
>>225774
The Dravidians have a rather spotty history, and it's not definitively known where they came from. It is believed by most linguists that they have been living in southern India since time immemorial, but other linguists propose a link to the extinct Elamite people in Iran and Iraq. They may have once occupied most of India south of the Gangetic Plain and west into Pakistan, before being displaced by the Indo-europeans.
In all of these examples I use words like "displace" and "overrun," but that doesn't necessarily imply hostility. In some cases the newcomers simply outbred the old inhabitants; in most cases they intermarried with the elite of society and the new language was more prestigious.
My point in these examples is that the primary factors in how humans divide themselves (and, by extension, how they interact with perceived "outsiders") are in their appearance and their languages. Y'know how those damn foreigners sound like "shrieking animals" or say "barbarbarbarbarbar".
Like it or not, people are tribal. And they'll turn on each other for looking different too. Black skinned X tribesmen will behave differently around yellow skinned tribesmen despite black skin tribe Y being foreign too. Blondes will treat brunettes differently, and people with brown eyes will treat people with green eyes differently.
Even members of the same "tribe" can go at each other's throats just as soon as someone from a much different "tribe." Time causes groups to fragment into myriad subgroups, and these subgroups will probably regard each other as "others," given that they may not share enough of their languages to communicate freely.
Look at the shitflinging between arabs and jews. Once upon a time they were one proto-semitic tribe wandering the deserts. Or between England and France, both are from the same culture of horsemen in the far east of Europe.
>playing CK2 - EU4 - Vicky 2 - Darkest Hour grand campaign
>Write biographies of all of my Emperors and as I get into the present day, statesmen, prime ministers, political parties etc.
>start detailing events after the scope of the games up to the present with election results etc.
>>225801
The Arabian Bedouins have a saying: "Myself against my brother. Myself and my brother against my clan. Myself, my brother, and my clan against my neighbor. Myself, my brother, my clan, and my neighbor against the outsider."
I think that characterizes a great deal of human interaction, in that even different peoples who are mutually hostile normally can often gang up on who they perceive to be more different. Of course there CAN be exceptions to the rule.
Often when one group of people have an age old conflict with another, new comers can look like GREAT cannon fodder/allies against the "ancient enemy". That is until the new guys conquer them BOTH.
Anyway, after you've had your early humans spread about the known world they can then be divided into a few ethno-linguistic groups whose descendants will be the main "protagonists" of history. Like the PIE becoming all manner of Celts, Aryans, Germanics, Greeks, Italics, Albanians, Armenians, Slavs, Baltics, etc. and all of THEIR daughter tribes.
Pinpoint major phenotype mutations so you can have an idea what the people of each region look like. It's not particulary important, but it would give a more fleshed-out world than just saying "X group looks different form Y group, so they went to war a couple of times. Fuck Y group"
>>225833
Height has great variation in just about every human population; as such it does not have individual mutations but is subject to environmental selective pressures. Generally speaking, groups that cover a lot of distance on foot like plains nomads tend to be taller than other groups, since they have longer legs. The American plains natives were once the tallest ethnic group in the world. In contrast, people in mountainous regions tend to have a stockier build better suited for climbing, greater lung volume, better oxygenation, higher haemoglobin levels, and smaller stature that allows them to survive falls more easily. As an example, the Japanese appear to have been of shorter stature for a long time; there are multiple references in ancient Chinese texts referring to an "island of black-teeth dwarfs" among the eastern barbarians (from the 3rd to the 19th century, Japanese women and some men customarily dyed their teeth black).
The Pygmy people of the Congo are not the most ancient lineage as is sometimes believed; rather, they are the second-most ancient lineage, thought to originate some 60,000 years ago. Therefore, short stature in certain ethnic groups must be a mutation-derived trait.
Other, somewhat taller Pygmy-like peoples exist in the Philippines, Papua, and far northern Australia, all of them in tropical rainforest environments. Common theories for the development of their stature are adaptations to vitamin D deficiency and lower food requirements taking into account poor rainforest soil.
>>225847
The ancestral African skin color is due to a melanin mutation, the Melanocortin 1 Recepter (MC1R) that occurred sometime after hominids lost their prodigious body hair, but before the advent of anatomically modern humans (Chimpanzees and Bonobos both have white skin). This receptor is present in Indian Adivasi tribes and in Papuan-Melanesian people, but is absent elsewhere. Genetic studies show that MC1R has never been regained after having once been lost, and was primarily lost due to UV-related selective pressure associated with latitudes between 20°N and 20°S.
The difference between brownish shades and the skin tones we normally call "white" appear to be primarily due to the Solute Carrier 24 Family 5 gene, abbreviated SLC24A5. This gene is found in a majority of Europeans, plus middle-easterners from Morocco to Pakistan and parts of northern India. This gene mutation arose some 20,000 years ago. Because this is a solitary amino acid mutation, it is not possible to pinpoint exactly where or when it arose. However, it is thought that it became dominant in Europe some 11,000 to 19,000 years ago with the arrival of Anatolian farmers. Another gene that has a lesser role in Europeans' light skin color is SLC45A2. There will most probably be only one incidence of SLC24A5 mutation that will be inherited by ensuing populations; this gene will probably occur more than 45° from the equator.
>>225855
Androgenic hair (the technical term for body hair, since it generally occurs most visibly in men) can be found in nearly all populations, except the Andamanese. The primary difference in populations is in the frequency of occurrence. The ancestral humans evidently had very little body hair, since running in the hot sun all day necessitated the ability to radiate heat. In contrast, bodily hair apparently re-evolved in two epicenters: The Mediterranean Sea and Hokkaido. This phenotype spread throughout the world mostly from Europe; the Ainu are still famously hairy but never really spread beyond northern Japan. However, the Japanese do have a better ability to grow beards than other east asians.
The Siberian peoples were never exposed to the re-evolved bodily hair gene; as a result, Siberians and their descendants the Amerindian tribes never gained this ability. European anthropologists have long observed that many native american peoples are incapable of growing beards.
To reflect real-world trends in bodily hair, you should choose one, two, or three ancestral populations fairly late in the prehistoric migratory era which will re-evolve androgenic body hair. Then track the presence of body hair once you model their subsequent migration.
>>225860
Hair color is quite complex. It is known that the basal, ancestral hair color is black, which is retained in nearly all African, Asian, Oceanian, and Amerindian populations. Our ancestral humans here will also have black hair.
Hair coloration is controlled almost entirely by the relative levels of two pigments: dark Eumelanin and light Pheomelanin. All people have some Pheomelanin in their hair, but a rare mutation can cause a lack of Eumelanin and blond hair. This mutation occurred first in central Scandinavia relatively late in the migration era (perhaps 20,000 BP), and secondly in Melanesia. The melanesian mutation is different and results in blond hair in children that darkens to brown by adulthood.
European peoples have a different strain of Eumelanin, identifiable by polymer pattern, which is brown rather than black. As a result, Europeans, North Africans, and middle-eastern peoples can have non-black hair. The interplay between genes causing hair color is still being researched.
True red hair is caused by the Melanocortin receptor 1 gene, abbreviated MCR-1. This gene also causes a greater degree of paleness, and thus is not found in tropical regions due to negative selection pressure.
Auburn hair is associated with Indo-European phenotypes and is otherwise rare, but I don't think it's definitively known which genes control for it.
The ancestral form of hair texture is kinky and tightly-curled, as seen in African and Papuan peoples. However, straight hair eventually developed sometime around 50,000 BP. The East Asian phenotype of thick, straight hair is a separate mutation that occurred around the same time.
>>219043
>I used make really shitty maps
>Implying I don't do that still
>Implying I'm not writing an entire story for my terrible maps
>Implying I'm not trying to turn this into a series of books some day
My autism knows no bounds, Anon.
I actually have two of these things kicking around in my head, this one has sci-fi and fantasy elements, the other one does not.
Probably nothing will ever come out of it, but I can dream.
>>225868
Brown eyes are the basal phenotype for eye color, but there are thought to be some 15 genes responsible for the expression of eye color. It is thought that the mutations leading to light-colored eyes in Europe occurred in Scandinavia. Green eyes are thought to be associated with variants of the OCA2 skin color gene. It is known that eye color tends to be associated with skin color, in that light eyes often accompany light skin, but in mixed individuals light eyes can uncommonly appear in darker-skinned individuals.
The characteristic fold present in East Asian eyes is thought by some to be an adaptation to desert conditions; sand is less likely to fly into your eye if it has an epicanthic fold, and glare from the sun is less intense. It is also present in San bushmen in southern Africa; said people also dwell in the desert.
Cleft chins are a quirky eastern european mutation. This mutation could potentially appear anywhere in your world.
Pretty much all cultures think straight jaws are beautiful. Overbites and underbites are associated with inbred fuckers.
People from the tropics tend to have wider and flatter noses than those who do not.
Another thing to keep in mind, whatever tribes domesticate cows first will probably develop tolerance to lactose first as well.
>>225884
A great deal of different societies will exist by the "neolithic" of your setting. Obviously you have the hunter-gatherers who will still exist in this period depending on the place and time. These societies will start to disappear once the Neolithic begins (i.e about the last date of the ethnolinguistic map) but only once agriculture and domesticated animals really get going there. The presence of agriculture will not cause an instant transition to settled lifestyles.
What we often find in this era are semi-sedentary societies; these are societies which essentially migrate between several locations practising agriculture on a small scale but continuing to hunt and forage for a significant proportion of their food. This can also occur with agriculture replaced with pastoralism. However, when talking about semi-sedentary pastoralists don't imagine something resembling fully nomadic pastoralists; whilst many things about their lives are very different, a better comparison are the migrant shepherds which continue to exist to this very day. Indeed, there are many examples of people continuing this lifestyle in Europe well until the modern day and this lifestyle will not automatically die out over the course of the Neolithic. An important consequence is that early on, some areas like islands are likely only inhabited seasonally and not full time. For a good example of this, see early inhabitation on Cyprus.
To counterbalance this, there will be societies which are already settled even before the spread of agriculture and domesticated animals. In particular, successful fishing societies. The oldest settled societies we are archaeologically aware of are all based around fishing, either coastal or near a reliable source of freshwater fish. They will obviously alter in response to the transmission of agriculture and animals, but my point is that their shift will not be from migratory to settled.
>>225890
At the business end of the period you begin to see the emergence of larger scale societies in fortified towns, and some will be city-states. This phase will lie some millennia after the start of the Neolithic and many areas will never see the city-state develop in this manner in the way we would recognize. Cities and the accompanying administrative complexity will begin to first consistently develop in either the same areas as the Cradles or very close by.
Note, importantly, that this is not a linear progress nor are these societies all leading towards certain developments automatically. There will be particular reasons why cities begin to develop in particular areas, for instance. Much of continental Europe never saw anything like a city introduced to the area until others began to settle there who had already become consistently city-dwelling.
>>225894
The more we find out about the Neolithic phases of various areas, the more we find that this is a period in which societies may not have bureaucratic engines yet but are certainly complex. Gobekli Tepe is a recently discovered and visible reminder that groups of humans capable of sustained effort have existed for a very long time indeed; whilst not wading into the debate as to what Gobekli Tepe is for, we can still state clearly that even the earliest iterations of the site have large walls, carved animal figures, that there are large circular compounds, and that workers cut through bedrock in order to even build there (and with flint tools to boot). This is in the early Neolithic. Nor is this the only example of a monumental site constructed in the Neolithic phases of various regions; Stonehenge is a famous example from the Late Neolithic in Europe, but there are other such monumental structures like the Megalithic Temples of Malta, the Cairn of Barnanez, Sechin Bajo, and Mehrgarh. These were all created by Neolithic societies and yet are feats of effort and construction that continue to be deeply impressive.
In the case of many these monuments, we don't know if we're dealing with fully settled peoples or not; they may well not be, and we should proceed with the assumption that not only people living in villages, towns, and cities will be capable of monumental construction. As for what motivated these constructions, this often remains opaque to us.
>>225894
This is pretty good stuff
I am screen capping all the stuff. Will edit and post later
>>225905
However, complexity is not restricted to the area of monumental building. Many of these societies will be egalitarian regarding outward marks of social status and such, but some will not be even at this early date and particularly around highly affluent societies. Cities in particular will have developed elites and have some kind of commanding authority by the time of their emergence, but this will also apply to many towns and even some villages. They may even exist in societies not dwelling in such places. The opposite should also be born in mind- many regions/societies may only rarely see elites emerge, and in one particular village/town, and only for a while until this proves unsustainable. Likewise, our pre-Neolithic settled fishers can easily be complex as well; the site of Lepenski Vir indicates that even before the Neolithic you can find settled societies in relatively ordered villages with some shared institutions.
Again, the message here is that there will be no uniform pattern- variations will exist alongside one another, at least for a time, and one will not automatically lead into another. There will be reasons why elites do or do not emerge in particular times and places.
I used to be a "black Hebrew Israelite" (blacks are the real Jews, the white man is evil!). I even got into arguments with people about it here on 4chan.
I'm not even black
>>225908
Separately to agriculture and domesticated animals, the following will likely be true; flint will be the primary material of choice for tool use of all kinds, except anything intended to be delicate in the which case you can obviously expect wood, reed, bone. Highly desirable will be obsidian, which has even sharper edges than flint but which is much, much rarer. This will obviously be relatively restrictive to areas in which obsidian can be found on the surface or without much difficulty. However, obsidian was prized enough that during the Neolithic you find that an entire early trade network springs up centred around the Aegean and the Levant dedicated to transmitting this obsidian. Once the use of metal tools begins in earnest that particular area will be out of the Neolithic, and into the next 'era' though this obviously a transition and not an instant change. An important note is that some societies may well briefly experiment with metal-smelting during the Neolithic but for whatever reason this doesn't take. It will also be invented more than once, like agriculture.
Ceramics will be available in many areas, being a pre-Neolithic technology. However, it may not become common until the Neolithic and many, and the potter's wheel will need to be developed during the Neolithic (unfortunately not coming as a default set with Ceramics). Some areas will take longer to adopt Ceramics than others, and some with a lacking factor or combination of lacking factors (no good clay, no capacity to heat to the right temperature, no time to shape the clay, or need for it) may never adopt Ceramics at all without outside intervention of some kind, or even stop using it. For example, the Ceramic Neolithic period on Cyprus does not begin until 4500 BC, and the Maori never used Ceramics whilst many other Polynesian cultures further to the North-West actually did so.
>>225916
In areas of sufficient complexity and with reasons for doing so, this period will begin to see the development of technological solutions to difficult farming conditions or to increase yields towards the end of the Neolithic in various areas. Irrigation canals in particular tend to emerge in regions in which farming is actually quite difficult. This is also somewhat circular, as the development of these solutions often increases complexity of society even further. Irrigation canals again have been invented independently in more than once place, and will spread (though mostly to other areas in need of it). Between the emergence of complex city-based cultures and the transmission of technologies requiring more complex social organisation like irrigation canals we will likely see new Cradles emerge. These will be the equivalent of the Oxus River and the Indus- areas that did not themselves give rise to things such as agriculture and many of the technologies of the Neolithic, but once given the tools rapidly become just as complex as the original Cradles themselves. The emergence of these new Cradles towards the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Bronze Age will be a massive game-changer in terms of the world's dynamics.
And one more important note, which may be obvious but is worth repeating; the Neolithic will take time to spread to other places, as will the technologies developed during the Neolithic. Likewise, the Neolithic will end at totally different times in different regions and areas. In other words, when we talk about the Neolithic and the Bronze Age it is not a question of 'X people developed agriculture, now the world is in a Neolithic Age; or 'Y people developed bronze-working, now the world is in a Bronze Age'. These phases are regional, highly dependent on both their connections to other societies and local conditions.
>this thread
It's okay that I make up lands and countries and histories
>>225922
So, there's a few criteria that I use for determining cradles of civilizations besides "lol subtropics n river valleys"
>A reasonable guarantee of flooding or similar that will leave alluvial soils naturally or with some assistance from man made structures. This is either from mountain meltwater, spring meltwater, or monsoon rains.
>Decent length. This is not technically necessary for early agriculture and the short rivers shouldn't be regarded as desert zones. But particularly for the rivers passing through arid zones, more length= more potential arable land and more potential room for humans to live densely enough to form cities.
>The middle ground between hardship and potential rewards. There have been no temperate areas included here because, frankly, whilst agriculture and pastoralism will be taken up just as readily there will likely be relatively balmy conditions that are less than likely to generate the need to organise to overcome them. Likewise, rainforest soils are VERY tricky for agriculture.
>However, we are discovering that actually underneath the Amazon there are ancient human cities and sites and at least some agricultural innovation occured within the Amazon basin, with careful management rainforest soil can be used
>These are not places where agriculture will develop and nowhere else, these are the places that will likely achieve some kind of population density and agricultural surplus that will allow for the emergence of urban environments towards the end of the Neolithic.
>The spread of agriculture to these areas will likely see new crops domesticated in or nearby these cradles, so we should be looking at those again eventually.
>>225937
Endorheic basins are usually not suitable for agriculture because they are typically drier than oceanic basins. This is mostly because they are farther away from rainfall; the elevated terrain that usually separates endorheic basins from oceanic ones can also cause a rainshadow effect, which makes it worse. However, this is not an intrinsic property of endorheic basins, just a likely happenstance. Endorheic basins of sufficient size can attract enough inflow to behave more or less as oceanic ones, from an anthropological perspective. Lake Chad is a good example; it has been the center of significant agriculture for thousands of years.
On the other hand, the Lake Eyre basin in Australia is exceedingly poor for agriculture, because the rains in that part of the world are rare and intermittent, so all of the inflows are temporary.
Speaking of agriculture, there is also the New Guinean highlands to consider, where over a million tribesman managed to develop agriculture despite a lack of large rivers. However, I personally believe that they learned their agricultue third- or fourth-hand from lowlander tribes, which in turn probably learned it from Melanesians.
It's potentially feasible but relatively rare for a culture to jump directly into ironwork, but large places abundant in iron can in theory pull it off like in Africa.
Ultimately, metalworking and the extraction of mining by itself does not automatically result in a big, complex 'civilization'. As you can see in South American history, the lack of metalworking outside of gold and silver does not necessarily prevent quite complex societies emerging. And in Iberia, Cornwall, Britanny, Austria, Cyprus, you can observe that metal extraction does not necessarily catalyze the birth of complex states during the Bronze Age.
>>225774
In Europe you have 3 big linguistic families, indo-european, uralic and altaic and some isolates like basque and possibly etrucan. Pre-colonial North America (what is now USA and Canada) had about ~60 language families, some major ones with 20-30 languages, and many minor ones including isolates. Europe is about half the size, so one can assume the existence of about 30 families.
>>225948
The reason that palace economies developed across such a big chunk of the Near East and even the Aegean is not because that is what a Bronze Age society does as a matter of course, it's partly because those forms were associated with sophistication and power because the most ancient and developed states all had this sort of structure.
To take an Iron Age example, Gaulish communities had incredibly sophisticated metallurgy and textiles. In certain other societies you might associate that with full on states, but you really can't talk about states in Gaul of any kind until the Roman conquest apart from maybe Noricum which is an interesting exception. To take a Bronze Age example, Cyprus was one of the most important sources of copper in the Mediterranean. However, much like during its Neolithic history Cyprus seems to have lagged behind a number of developments; palace economies never seem to have truly developed on Cyprus, we have nothing really indicating genuinely potent states and much of our evidence for copper extraction and mining is not huge in scale. However, wrecks like that of Uluburun and some of the Amarna tablets indicate that there was at least somebody on Cyprus that the Near Eastern states recognized as a 'High King' of sorts, and that Cyprus in this era was capable of producing enormous quantities of copper.
It has been a painful process and took a while, but ultimately what experts realised is that we've been using the Near Eastern bronze age and its fallout as the model for what a particular type of era is 'supposed' to look like. And actually, that's quite evidently not true the more you actually look at the situation on the ground. Like 'Feudal Europe', the Near Eastern-centred Bronze Age is not a general repeatable phenomenon but a very specific event with a particular fallout. And even within that sphere there are many exceptions.
>>225951
Valid point
>>225960
Humans are incredibly adaptable; many different societies have developed similar strategies regarding sustenance and prosperity, and many societies have developed totally different strategies dependent on local conditions. It's sort of part of the beauty of early human history that there isn't a set linear path of development that functions like a checklist before you can 'move on'.
After the major wanderings of your "cavemen" and the development of agriculture in some areas to the degree you like comes the diversification of your ethno linguistic groups.
Your big blobby "tribal groups" begin to branch off into daughter groupings. You may even be tempted to begin a language for whatever people picked up writing first.
(protip: make it somewhere where record keeping is vital, when trade gets really big)
Phonemic systems tend to cluster together via geography more than they do by family. For example, it is thought that 2,000 years ago Vietnamese had no tonal system, but extensive contact with China led them to borrow that feature. Amerindian languages, despite being from various families, all tend towards highly agglutinating grammar and relatively simple phonology. Naturally, exceptions exist in all cases.
Vocabulary is something that more strongly indicates family descent, but it too is subject to foreign borrowings.
>"Trih, three, þreis, tres, treĩs, trayah, tri, etc."
Grammar tends to be between the two, in that languages in extensive contact with one another may pick up on each other's grammatical constructs and paradigms, but at the same time major grammar rules usually come from direct descent. Different grammatical rules can depend more or less strongly on contact vs. direct relation.
Agglutination in particular is the sort of thing that can be dropped or picked up easily in the course of linguistic evolution, and as a result you can sometimes see large regions of multiple language families that share similar systems of agglutination.
>>225977
Naming things can be interesting.
Many ethnic groups simply call themselves "the people" or "the true/good people". Sometimes on group will only be known by what other call them. "the asshole people from down the river" or "the people of X-land".
You don't need to always be fancy with naming. The Romans called the Mediterranean "Our Sea". Chicago is a french mispronunciation of a native american word meaning "Stinky Onion", considering how many grew there.
Languages change quite often; they usually become completely separate after each millennium or so. English managed to completely change up its vowels in that time, losing its rich system of noun cases and about half of its verb conjugations.
Previous history has a bearing on later history, so what happens earlier should still affect what happens later. New states will emerge over time, and probably quite a number of them. This will always have a knock on effect; every state has an impact beyond their own borders, particularly when they interact with established relationships or create entirely new ones. Plus, these new states will have their own fates that need deciding. The cities that currently exist will not remain the only ones; after all, the Minoan and Mycenaean urban cultures emerged well after many of the Near Eastern states, but still definitely existed. Likewise, existing cultures will have new cities emerge, and older ones perhaps vanish. The toings and froings of states isn't entirely random, any more than it's entirely deterministic. General changes and shifts in various places should have some sort of general ramification on elsewhere, and things like growth of expertise and complexity should matter as well.
Remember that cultural hearths tend to have their language become prestigious. Look at the effect of Latin, Sumerian, and Greek on the cultures who followed the path they forged.
>>225999
"Barbarians" will often learn the joys of civilized life and settle down rather quickly. Preferring to enjoy the soft prissy city dwellers lifestyle than utterly destroy it.
We see this all over the place.
I'd like to point out that any writing system must change its form depending on the medium. For example, germanic Futhorc written on wood could not have horizontal lines because otherwise they would blend into the grain. Burmese and other scripts in the area had to adopt a curvaceous, circular style because they were written on fragile leaves, which could not support straight lines without tearing. Ogham, much like futhorc, was inscribed on stone which made straight lines mandatory, since curves are too difficult on such a hard surface.
Swords become more widespread as metalworking advances. (I.E. they don't snap easily or get ruined when they're forged)
A culture's craftmanship can tell much about the culture itself. One civilization could develop very elaborate bronze swords and shield for burial of nobles and for state regalia etc. and another could have everything be utilitarian if they develop standardized military units where the state arms the soldier and the soldier does not buy his own equipment so the general knows what his troops are capable of.
And don't get too attached to any one culture. You'll probably end up turning them into mary sues. I should know from experience.
>"And then the awesomite empire conquered everybody who attacked them, never had weak rulers, and lasted 9,000 years in mint condition"
This is just me, but if you can work on a mythology. Mythology is like the collective dream of a people. It sums up their worldview in a beautiful fashion. Their laws, their hopes, their fears, their relationship with the wider cosmos, etc.
Keep in mind that trade routes are not magic prosperity highways. Wars happen, supplies run dry, new routes open up and ruin the lives of merchants with a monopoly.
>>226018
You can't touch someone and not be touched yourself. When you reach the point that your cultures can really interact (violently or peacefully) they'll both be effected. People trade ideas like baseball cards. Gods get passed around like whores and take on new forms suitable for foreign worshipers. Take a look at how different Japanese Buddhism is from it's technical ancestor Vedic Hinduism.
Technology changes hands, and philosophies are debated.
>>225999
civilizations can influence each other in many ways. contemporary civilizations come into direct contact, but the legacy of an older civilization can have an impact across time on later generations. for example, earlier civilizations had a shaping effect on classical greece, and the legacy of classical greece has had influence far beyond classical antiquity and into the present.
as for language, it can grow and change by many factors. I think it's important to note that highly influential literature can "anchor" a language to a certain form, so that it doesn't drift as easily. also, religion can preserve a language, almost like a fossil in amber, to be used as a prestigious liturgical language long after it's no longer commonly used.
>>226025
also, this is worthwhile reading, keep posting.
>>221536
I do, but never got good enough to win anything past King level (at least not consistently). Part of the problem might be that for 90% of the time i play on modded epic speed, on a huge world map, with Iroquis
>>226032
I'm not really sure what else I can say.
Normally at this point I write the actual history.
Uh...throw in a crazy ruler every blue moon for a laugh?
Remember that while slavery was very common in the old world, some places like India and China had no real need or desire for them and it pretty much died out except in the case of criminals?
That people can worship a God-King one day and then scream for his head on a spike if the rains fail too many times?
>>226044
you were really on a roll for a minute there.
one idea I came across is the high level equilibrium trap. this is when the standard of living reaches a high plateau, so that life is good but it doesn't progress. the institution of slavery can contribute to this situation.
China is the current example, but I think it also applies to Rome, Byzantium and others.
>>226057
True.
Although I feel it's a mere symptom of decay rather than the source.
>>219121
>>221516
Two modmods for RFC (if you don't know that, please look it up!) and the current one just meant to further the enjoyability of the game itself, i.e. a lot to with tweaking the current mechanics rather than creating new ones. It was built on top of Better Bug AI, so there's thecase of improved interface as well, though that's not to my credit.
I'll be releasing it in Civfanatics.com around the New Year (it'll be titled 'BBAI Custom +username'), so if you're so inclined please tell me if I failed or succeeded in my desire to correct the game's internal balance issues. That would be nice.
>>226078
Seconded right down to the mobile part.
I make up fake dynasties
I have my own fantasy universe with elves (humans are currently limited to a small area in the north, where they displaced the elves with their abilities to control fire). I have thought up lots of nations for them, each with its own looks, customs etc. My elves can live for about 1000 years, which gives me alot to think about, since the dynamics of technological progress would be radically different. The cultures aren't that alien though, I'd like to keep them relatable. The fauna and flora is original as well, and you can notice that in the symbols used by various civilizations that have come into contact with various creatures and plants.
Here's a portrait of an elf I made. They have several biological particularities: no body hair, barrel chests, their head is of a more oval, pointy shape, their eyes have no visible pupils or irises and they're more massive than humans, towering over them. Their hair comes in all colours except red, something which is specific to humans (in fact, it's the predominant hair color - their skin color ranges from nordic to mediterranean)
I am working on a world map as well - I have a general idea of where the various groups can be found, and I have a couple of more detailed regions where different cultures interact.
Is there anywhere I can randomly generate a planet's worth of terrain where elevation is labeled?
>>227611
This is one of the elves displaced by the humans. They had a very advanced civilization (what happened is more complex - it's pretty obvious that some human tribes couldn't eradicate a people so advanced, even if they could magically burn them), I'm even thinking of giving them a primitive form of electricity so they can light up their transparent cities at night.
>>227672
Reminds me of Mudokons from Oddworld series.
>>225916
I'm reading this and I'm liking it a lot.
I would like to add here the interesting example of the mesoamericans, who had pottery but adopted/developed it much later than the rest of the Americas. This is because they used pumpkins and other squash (the first crop they domesticated by far) to make recipients, so the need of pottery was less pressing.
I'm so autistic I keep track of imaginary holidays
>>227672
>a primitive form of electricity
No such thing, it's either electricity or it isn't.
What you can do is give them a primitive form of electricity generation. like a Magick-y Baghdad Battery in each street light or something.
>>219043
Back in elementary school, there was this old, old globe in the library. I used to update a bunch of the capitals by drawing on it.
Not really related to history, but I would draw maps and then add roads and shit to make a city like a map or something
Fuck can anyone give me a screenshot of all of that? I'm on mobile too and am also autistic
This is without a doubt the most autistic thread on 4chan that I have seen since 2007.
Step aside, mortals
>>230185
Part of a work in progress (hence borders on the eastern edge)
>>219055
i do that but i can never be bothered to write it down and end up forgetting it then coming up with a new thing
>>230185
>>230204
Includes 5+ languages and writing systems, flags and coats of arms for 15-20 countries, including variations for different points in history / ideologies.
>>221516
i used to play civ5 but i switched to euiv. huge improvement
I'd draw maps with dots representing population and illustrate the growth of towns, cities etc. over the years and write histories accompanying them a la colonial America independence wars and usurpers and the geopolitics of the made up new-world and all that. I also would draw maps of planned conquest in my Europa universalis games and when I was flipping through my notebook in school and a friend saw one of those pictures of Europe he asked me if I was the next Hitler, good times
>>225466
GIMP. I drew the detailed parts pixel-by-pixel.
>>225246
>later in-universe historians/revisionists
this is my favorite shit. Making up a history then having the people in the world tell it differently to suit their own needs or beliefs, and having the different retellings cause conflict
>>219216
>>231089
>>231093
>>231096
>>231100
>>231229
stop
>>231541
>>232346
>>232631
i took a semester of latin when it wasnt required for my major
>>219043
>Tfw created an entire fictional Islands nation based of Australia, the Spanish Caribbean and Indonesia
>tfw mapped out its history, religions, ethnic composition, geography, climate and economy
>tfw even went as far to map out the style of government and election cycles
Study and play lute music.
M'lady
>>232633
When I was unemployed I would spend every night writing entirely made up religions and then writing debates between "scholars" of said religions
>>229716
That's what I meant, sorry. They don't have magic so I'd actually have to learn about how electricity works.... Here's an Irocusai from the north, I'll post more northern ethnicities. The language families and the way they feel are still vague.
>>227672
>>227611
>>233158
This is an Oricor.
>>233158
>>233166
>>227672
Some of these elves, including their leadership, migrated southwards following the human invasion, and over the course of about 400 years they established another empire. There are subtle changes in fashion - robes have gotten shorter and they even started wearing pants, like the locals.
>>219163
Why didn't romans conquer the germans?
Sometimes gaining the land just isn't worth it
>>221426
I did that shit as well
I used to also record the blitzball leagues in FFX and keep track of transfers and record where everyone placed in the league and the cup.
