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 Wells and other Sundries (18:52) The subject for this video's brief historical aside is so deep, it's nigh unfathomable. Yes, that's terrible phrasing - deal with it. Inception plows through another growth spurt and labor crunch as well as most of the remaining Neolithic advances. We can now make both 'modern' clothing types, dig mines and wells, have another animal domesticated, and so on. It's almost time to jump to a new epoch, one that arguably doesn't even deserve to exist.
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Aug 6, 2020 18:14
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Copper Beckons (21:06) We've now moved decisively past the Neolithic 'hinge' and into the second half of Dawn of Man, though there's probably less than half actually to go. The 'Metal Age' is when raiding starts to get serious, and that'll be more of a challenge than usual because of something I overlooked; flattening the map meant that NO ore resource locations spawned. I have words about the ahistorical nature of that when I talk about copper and early metal discoveries in general (mining sucked in ancient times, heck there are parts of the world where it still really does *cough* lithium *cough), but I'm going to try to make lemons out of this lemonade by using the trader. I think the LP actually might be better off for this turn of events, but it was definitely not intentional.
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Aug 14, 2020 17:29
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I blame Civilization for the "you have to build mines in hills and mountains!" thing. More modern versions of the game have lifted that restriction, but in the original Civilization, if you wanted production, it was rough terrain only.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:41
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Remember that from Colonization as well. It's a common trope 'there's gold in them thar hills' and it's also often true. Just ... not always true and not how that kind of thing started.
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Aug 19, 2020 18:14
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Straw Struggles (20:04) The first episode of the Copper Age actually had a little bit to do with copper, and trading, and a new building that I forgot about in the previous session. Mostly though it had to do with continuation of agricultural challenges, in this case that being keeping enough food for the animals around so we don't feed them all of ours and send the whole city in a starvation tailspin. That didn't happen, but this was as close as I've come to it and IMO it's a much greater danger than the raiders, who return as well.
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Aug 19, 2020 18:16
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Wouldn't preemptively butchering a few animals have solved your food and straw problems at the same time?
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Aug 20, 2020 21:27
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Not really IMO. A few wouldn't have been enough to make a dent. I would have had to butcher a couple dozen to solve the straw problem, which also gives a good short-term influx of food. But then what? Dead animals don't breed or produce milk, so it would have hurt the long-term food situation. Definitely worth considering in an emergency, but I don't think the situation ever got that dire. Just bad enough that I needed to take a pause and grow my supplies as a way out of it.
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Aug 21, 2020 18:59
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Crossing the River (22:15) It's not all sunlight and joy for the city of Inception as a number of citizens die, some unnecessarily, while we pound our way through the rest of the Copper Age. I think the whole grinding-up, infrastructure-building aspect has more than run its course, so at this point I'm going to skip forward to entry into the Bronze Age where there will be a more significant shift. We've now gotten all the advancements prior to that, which was mostly just more crops and animals. And reflecting the episode title, we finally run out of space and hop across the river to nab some more real estate.
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Aug 27, 2020 18:40
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Somehow going over the river plus all the cattle roaming around made me go "drat this settlement's got pretty big"
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Aug 27, 2020 20:30
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That kind of thing does sneak up on you sometimes. Bronze Beginnings (20:35) To a certain extent I'm now 'playing out the string', so to speak. Going through Bronze Age and later events without dealing with the larger 'imperial' scale of civilization is a bit off. I'm reserving quite a bit of historical commentary for the next game in the HP timeline which will specifically deal with those issues, but for now we do have a new metal to use. Dawn of Man's historical accuracy loses quite a bit the last couple of epochs in order to maintain gameplay flow and progression, but there's still some useful concepts to explore. Inception has now done pretty much all the growing it can; trading for and integrating new toys is even more paramount now.
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Sep 2, 2020 17:02
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Stone, Finally (20:42) The title is a reference to the fact that we now have a significant use for those big piles on rock that have just been in our way since the start of the game. With the development of Masonry that now switches to the opposite extreme; the largest surge of construction that Inception has or will embark upon is now in full swing. Like many other topics, the actual progression of masonry is more interesting and complicated than might be initially surmised.
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Sep 9, 2020 18:33
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You've convinced me to pick this up.
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Sep 11, 2020 07:03
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Cool! Go forth and make the lives of your ancient humans flourish!!
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Sep 12, 2020 11:23
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Bronze Complications (21:44) Finishing up our building project, the rest of the Bronze Age advances, and so on. There's some not particularly historical elements here, some of which are justifiable and some of which are not IMO. That is likely to continue as we press out next into the final era of Dawn of Man, the Iron Age.
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Sep 16, 2020 15:44
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Where Do We Go From Here? If you're still following this thread, chances are high you've got enough historical interest to have a stake in how Historic Perspectives continues beyond this game. The Dawn of Man LP has probably two episodes left, three at most. After that will be another documentary-style video covering the emergence of ancient empires, the geographical shift of power in the Bronze Age, the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age, etc. The focus shifts here from the lives of individual townsfolk, although that'll still be in view from time to time, to primarily being about the larger scope. Larger political and economic forces beyond a settlement will determine the lives of common people. The next game(s) in the series needs to be focused on this empire-building aspect, the warfare which results, the new economic realities, etc. I have a plan in mind for that but it isn't too late to change it so I'm interested in any ideas. Starting from the emergence of larger political entities about 3500 BC (early Bronze Age) and running through mid-late first century AD (early feudalism/manorialism or what used to be called the Dark Ages) is our timeframe. A mere four millenia. Any ideas on how to present that in a fresh way, what game or games would be useful, what topics in this period of history interest you or you think are ignored too often/misunderstood, etc. are coveted highly. After that it gets a lot easier at least in the broad strokes. Paradox can take over the main thrust beginning with the Crusader Kings series and other games can be used to fill in other perspectives in tandem along the way most of the ride to present day. But it's not quite as clear how to get from here to there. If you want your thoughts considered, the next couple of weeks is the time to share them.
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Sep 16, 2020 20:18
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Old World is a sort of ancient-to-medieval era Civilization-style game that might possibly fit. As with any Civ-like, it's not exactly hugely historically accurate, but it does cover the right general eras (EDIT: without going into anything modern) and there aren't a lot of games that do. Some of the Total War games might fit as well. In particular, Troy covers Bronze Age empire-building pretty well from what I've heard. Zurai fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 16, 2020 20:27
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There is At the Gates. I didn't play much because it was to complicated, but I would love to see an LP.
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Sep 17, 2020 00:18
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There was an Imperator: Rome mod that covered the bronze age but its been canceled (might still work on an older version of Imperator). The same mod is being remade in CK3, but I'm not sure what state it's in.
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Sep 17, 2020 01:14
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Egypt: Old Kingdom is a lot of fun and would cover the next phase pretty well. TW: Troy picks up around where that drops off. Old World is great but is too much of a 4X and not enough of an historical simulation to fit the theme IMO.
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Sep 17, 2020 02:00
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Zurai posted:Some of the Total War games might fit as well. In particular, Troy covers Bronze Age empire-building pretty well from what I've heard. I think Troy is too tightly focused on the Trojan War to be of much use here. It might be moddable to better fit, but everything from the map only being Greece and Western Anatolia to the larger than life heroes to the heavy military emphasis makes it a poor fit for how I perceive the project to be going. That said, Rome II does have a Bronze Age mod, entitled Age of Bronze. I haven't tried it myself, and it doesn't have a campaign despite having been in development for years, but it could be used to create battles as a supplement to a more strategic game.
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Sep 17, 2020 08:45
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There is a ck3 bronze age mod which might work. Never played it though.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:52
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Beefeater1980 posted:Egypt: Old Kingdom is a lot of fun and would cover the next phase pretty well. TW: Troy picks up around where that drops off. Seconding the recs for Egypt: Old Kingdom. Maybe Predynastic Egypt as a lead in, but honestly it covers a lot of Dawn of Man's territory, so skippable. Both are pretty short though.
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Sep 17, 2020 15:05
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If you manage to make them run without hitches (I've had trouble with that myself) Impressions' city builder series would work, notably Pharaoh/Cleopatra (old egypt) and Emperor (china because eurocentrism gets boring, the first campaigns follow the Xia & Shang dynasties (road to bronze age basically) ; the Zhou and Qin dynasties cover the passage from bronze to iron as well as the first unification of China for all your empire-building needs)
Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 03:10
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Thanks for all the ideas everybody. Whatever happens will be better because of your suggestions that it would have been otherwhise. ** At The Gates - more of an 'early CK' timeframe game, so I'm reserving judgement for later. Probably much later, by the time I get there  . ** Old World I had thought about and I agree with the sentiments that it looks good so far, but likely doesn't fit here. ** Egypt: Old Kingdom wins my vote for best idea so far. I was aware of Predynastic Egypt, but not the sequel which in some ways fits the transition from Dawn of Man like a glove. In others there are weird things like advances placed too late in the timeline, but I really like the overall picture and they clearly prioritized the history more than most games. It may be shortish but there's a lot of material in it so like this LP it would probably get stretched out quite a bit. ** Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom - I'd really like to do a China game to balance things out some globally and this is a good way to do it. . That will depend on me finding a way to get the sound to work though and working out any other kinks that might come up. ** Troy: Total War - the limited scope is an issue, but if I can find a reasonable way to make it a relative quicky - not exactly a typical TW thing - I think it could be useful in terms of the Bronze Age collapse particularly given that it sits right at that timeframe in the region most ill-equipped to handle it. If so it will come after the others so I have time to ponder whether I want to do this or not, survey the mod scene at that stage, etc. I think it's also basically incumbent to do a Roman-themed game for an endpiece to this stretch.
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Sep 18, 2020 21:14
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As Strong As Iron? (21:13) The Iron Age begins, with plenty of work still left to fully integrate the last of the Bronze Age advances. Discussion of the complicated distinctions between iron and bronze ensues, some infrastructure boosts, and soon we find ourselves in need of upgrading defenses to deal with increasingly hazardous raiders. Trade is lucrative at first, but then concerningly falls off. How well this epoch goes will depend heavily on how much iron we can import.
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Sep 24, 2020 14:38
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Conclusion (21:56) Watermills, Cairns, and Steel are among the concepts presented in the last Age, some decidedly better than others. The journey through Dawn of Man is now complete, in just a hair under a century in game-years. Overall a fine game worth playing, imperfect but well-conceived.
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Sep 30, 2020 16:10
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So now that we're done here, I'll be doing a video on the rise of ancient empires, narrowing the focus to the early part of that - as I've dove into the research for that more I found that I wanted to expand what I was going to discuss there anyway. Sometime in October for that, and I'll post a link in this thread as sort of a postscript. Then for the next phase, I'm going to go with two of the suggested games, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Egypt: Old Kingdom. I plan on alternating/leapfrogging between the two, doing a compare and contrast on how and possible reasons why arguably the two most important cultures of their time developed differently, at different times, etc. At that time I'll have a different thread here on the forums for each. Thanks again for all the ideas everyone put forth.
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Oct 1, 2020 14:43
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Congratulations on getting through DoM! Looking forward to seeing the next set of projects, since I love them both but never managed to get through them both completely (always got distracted for Emperor after the first two campaigns and the Egypt series suffers a little of "single playthrough's worth of content, then it's all about hyperefficiency."). Might be inspired to try to join you for a parallel playthrough on Emperor, but we'll see how life goes. Jossar fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 18:12
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Thanks for this look at a game that I otherwise wouldn't know about, and I look forward to the next installment.
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Oct 14, 2020 20:44
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Excellent. It's slow going because I am the master of analysis paralysis and overthinking, but I'm working through the transition 'lecture' and it's gradually coming together.
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Oct 15, 2020 02:38
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Governing Is Hard: The First Wave Matures (15:17) This thread will be hitting the archives soon, but throwing this up here anyway. Ended up taking rewriting, rewriting again, rewriting more after that. Just as I thought I had a handle on what I wanted to do with it, research would uncover a new direction. In any case, I'll link this in the new series as well, which at this point will be starting probably around Christmas or a little before. Later than I wanted to get to them, but many things haven't gone as planned this year. In any case, I hope this serves as a useful foundation and into to exploring the great cultures of the ancient world. Thanks again to everyone who followed this. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Nov 24, 2020 15:09
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The map shown from 11:05 to 13:--, do you have a link handy? I'd like to take a closer look.
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Nov 24, 2020 21:19
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Sure, but you won't be able to enlarge/clarify it much unless you can find a better source. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_in_1000_BCE.png#/media/File:World_in_1000_BCE.png
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Nov 24, 2020 21:34
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Oh hey welcome back
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Nov 25, 2020 00:41
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Strategic Sage posted:Sure, but you won't be able to enlarge/clarify it much unless you can find a better source. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_in_1000_BCE.png#/media/File:World_in_1000_BCE.png Well at least for Balkans it is wrong. First of all, Urnfeld culture is a bit more to the south. Second, even if we assume that Illyrian existed at all (which some scientists don't agree with), they are Iron age ethnic group, not Bronze age. First real written account come centuries after 1000 BC. I cannot tell how accurate is it beyond Balkans.
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Nov 25, 2020 01:05
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That's mostly fair, but also not important relative to what I was using it for in the video. I think it's accurate enough for what I wanted to show.
Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Nov 25, 2020 |
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Nov 25, 2020 12:01
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