Civilization Overview: The United States

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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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Jotunir wrote:
harcha wrote:What I was saying is that they were not going for max profit by setting 20USD price. And I used an exaggeration to point that out. The fact that you gloss over that point and refuse to admit that you're making shit up makes you look like a dumb himbo.
Thank you for calling me attractive but shallow (himbo) and for making me laugh. They are going for max profit. I hope you learned something today my friend.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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harcha wrote:
Jotunir wrote:
harcha wrote:What I was saying is that they were not going for max profit by setting 20USD price. And I used an exaggeration to point that out. The fact that you gloss over that point and refuse to admit that you're making shit up makes you look like a dumb himbo.
Thank you for calling me attractive but shallow (himbo) and for making me laugh. They are going for max profit. I hope you learned something today my friend.
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Thank you for the warning ;)
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by ShinkuroYukinari »

Dolan wrote:
harcha wrote:Calling a 20 $ game money milking seems a bit extreme. They easily coulda released it at 40usd.
You don't charge 40 bucks for a game with an engine made in the early 2000s.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Snuden »

Would be cool if it had a Trump age up politician, not only would you loose all your res, but also all your hair.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Snuden »

Snuden wrote:Would be cool if it had a Trump age up politician, not only would you loose all your res, but also all your hair.
The advantage should be that you get all your opponents res.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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Post by musketeer925 »

duckzilla wrote:
musketeer925 wrote:To everyone who says USA isn't in the timeline: the French leader is Napoleon, who took power in 1804...
Sorry but this is the least valid argument that has ever been spoken on this entire forum. None of the leaders lived for the entire timeframe from ~1490-1850. The argument that Napoleon did not live earlier is ridiculous, given that in this game you play civilizations such as the French. You do not play Napoleon. He simply represents the French for AI players. That's it.
I guess I don't understand the historical/timeline argument against USA, because the anti-USA timeline arguments fall under "the least valid argument that has ever been spoken on this entire forum" category to me.

Apparently, the problem is not that they are not in the timeline, which what I thought people meant to say, and what my Napoleon argument was meant to indicate. As you indicated, the timeline is ~1490 - ~1850.

The problem can't be that the US didn't exist at the beginning of the timeline, since Germany didn't either. Germany as a civ is a great analogue for the United States in the timeline. For most of the timeline, Germany represents states of the Holy Roman Empire which occupied much of the same area of modern Germany. The people and culture who would become Germans already there. Same with Japan (unified in 1590), India (a British colony for most of the timeline, not fully independent until 1947). Similarly individual states which would later become the United States were existed for much of the timeline, and the people and culture of the United States grew out of those states. Virginia was founded in 1619 and had its own legislature. The states were largely self-governing and saw little oversight from the British for much of their history, and their governments are the direct precursor for the modern government of the United States (which is more than all but Prussia can say in Germany, which only occupy overlapping geographical areas).

Obviously, several of the civs also didn't exist at the end of the timeline like Inca and Aztecs.

If the argument that the United States did not take part in exploration or colonization... that's absurd on many fronts. The United States expansion into the West was clearly an act of exploration and colonization that took place during the timeline. Even before 1776, individual states, were pushing their borders west and colonizing those areas (thus necessitating George III's Royal Proclamation forbidding the colonies from further expanding west). The United States was probably the biggest colonizer in the Western Hemisphere in the time period other than Spain. Finally, several of the civs in AoE3 took no basically part in colonization, like Ottomans, India, of course all of the Native American civs.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Dolan »

Astaroth wrote:The historical argument is still silly. There are countless things in the game that make no sense, that never happened and that realistically could never have happened. Ottomans colonizing the US? Aztecs surviving until 1800? Germans as a state, when they werent until the 1870s?

Of course you can find all kinds of pseudo-justifications, such as claiming these are "what if" scenarios, it applies to peoples, not states (did the Germans even identify as one people in 1500?) etc. But these are not very convincing.

By that logic, you can also claim that the US is based on a what if scenario, namely an earlier independence. Aside from that: lots of civs in the game were (partly) conquered by other people or had different ruling classes. Just look at India from 1400-1800. So you could apply the same to the US: the the territory was occupied by the Brits for a long time.

I get that you might find the civ boring, but defining some arbitrary "historical" limits to the game which the civ does not respect is a silly argument. The game is ahistorical in basically every single way.
I'll repeat an argument I made before, since it hasn't been countered yet.
AOE is not a history book, agreed, but it's not a historical fantasy game either. It's mostly a historically plausible game, in the sense that the core of the game content is built around the reality of past civilisations, not invented ones. The details might be off a bit here and there, but by and large it sticks to representing the local specifics of each civ (the kind of units they used, military tech, types of buildings).

Dutch, German, French are just labels that were put on a distinct group of peoples whose history eventually culminated in a modern state or empire, it's about the history of those people, not about the official names of those states. During medieval times, people didn't identify with a nation state, that's true, but they did identify with the language they spoke and the people who spoke their language too, among other things (social status, position, etc). That's why Germanic peoples called those peoples who spoke Celtic or some derivation of a Latin language "Walhaz", because they made a clear distinction between "us people who speak a Germanic language" and them, who speak some Celtic/Latin language. By contrast, Germanics used a similar word to call the language that belonged to their people, to their tribes (diutisk). This word later became Deutsch or even Dutch for other Germanic peoples.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by musketeer925 »

Dolan wrote: Dutch, German, French are just labels that were put on a distinct group of peoples whose history eventually culminated in a modern state or empire, it's about the history of those people, not about the official names of those states. During medieval times, people didn't identify with a nation state, that's true, but they did identify with the language they spoke and the people who spoke their language too, among other things (social status, position, etc). That's why Germanic peoples called those peoples who spoke Celtic or some derivation of a Latin language "Walhaz", because they made a clear distinction between "us people who speak a Germanic language" and them, who speak some Celtic/Latin language. By contrast, Germanics used a similar word to call the language that belonged to their people, to their tribes (diutisk). This word later became Deutsch or even Dutch for other Germanic peoples.
Are you suggesting this argument doesn't apply to the people of the United States? The states which were pretty much self-governing despite being British colonies and their governments and people are the direct pre-cursor to the American state.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Dolan »

@musketeer925
The USA is a unique case, imo, since it's a federation of colonies that was populated with ethnic diasporas, that is, people living in exile, who left their original countries to seek religious freedom or economic opportunities.
So, I think, the USA is a special case in terms of how the country was founded and how its people came about.
I'm not disputing the validity of adding a USA civ to AOE3, btw. A case could be made that such an addition would make sense, even though in that historical period, the USA wasn't a world power yet (like other colonial powers), it became one later.
All these civs that were included in AOE3 (or even earlier Age games) were world powers at some point or had dominant cultures in the area in which they lived (like the Aztecs, Sioux, Mongols).
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by PatrickLFC »

Jets wrote:This civ has so many bonuses that you can make an entire civ out each one.

-Age up cards
-Improved Saloon outlaws
-Immigration cards
-Long range units
-Trainable building wagons
-General flag mechanic
-Cheap but longer to research techs
-Age 3/4 stuff available earlier
-Consulate-like forts
-Improved town militia

And the list goes on and on as I haven't finished seeing Drongo's videos yet.

I stopped playing a few month ago, waiting for the game to be more balanced patch after patch, but now it's clear that balance would never come.
It's kind of strange to have so many unique mechanics in the one civ, but designed in such a way that most of them won't get a lot of play once a meta is figured out. Impressed with the creativity but it can't be easy to balance
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Did the Dutch really identify as one people in 1500? Im inclined to answer that with no
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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Post by Mr_Bramboy »

RefluxSemantic wrote:Did the Dutch really identify as one people in 1500? Im inclined to answer that with no
Nope. Even well into the Republic, people's allegiances were with their city or gewest, not their country. The "Dutch" parliament did not have the power to implement nation-wide laws throughout the entire history of the Republic. There's a reason we say "the Seven United Netherlands" - it was only one country de jure. This only changed after France's invasion.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Mr_Bramboy wrote:
RefluxSemantic wrote:Did the Dutch really identify as one people in 1500? Im inclined to answer that with no
Nope. Even well into the Republic, people's allegiances were with their city or gewest, not their country. The "Dutch" parliament did not have the power to implement nation-wide laws throughout the entire history of the Republic. There's a reason we say "the Seven United Netherlands" - it was only one country de jure. This only changed after France's invasion.
So that means the comparison between the Dutch and the USA is quite good. The Dutch people didnt exist, the Netherlands as a country didnt exist, and yet nobody complains about the Dutch being in the game.

Also looking at the civ preview I feel like the USA is really nicely thematic and a great fit for this game.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Dolan »

RefluxSemantic wrote:Did the Dutch really identify as one people in 1500? Im inclined to answer that with no
And who claimed that. What I said is that people used language as a way to differentiate between who were foreigners and who were part of "the people". And different Germanic peoples used a variation of the old High German diutisc (which actually meant "of the people", referring to the Germanic language spoken by the common people, as opposed to a language like Latin used by the learned and the higher classes).

But what do you think it meant when Germanic peoples used some variation of Walhaz (or Walsche as it was in Old Dutch) to call foreigners who spoke a Celtic or Latin-based language? It meant "those guys are not of our people, they are foreigners". This gives you some insight into how ethnic identification worked back then. For Hellenistic Greeks it was also centered around culture, language and being a citizen of a particular city-state. Ancient Greeks called "barbars" those people whose language sounded like frog vocalisations (bar bar), so the reason why they were seen as a different people was primarily the language and other differences in social customs and practices.

Don't simplify the argument, because history is a lot more complicated than just "hurr, proto-Dutch people didn't identify specifically as something they called Dutch", because I never claimed they did. Though, they did use a root of the word that later became "Dutch" to signify "of our people, of the people" (Old Dutch: thiudisc, Middle Dutch: dietsch, duutsch, etc). But it was something implied, they didn't wear it as a social badge, like what we call today nationality. Simply because there was no political entity that was labelled like that and that they could identify with. Identification works like in sports, someone identifies with "team green" if Team Green actually exists for a long enough period of time.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Dolan »

RefluxSemantic wrote:So that means the comparison between the Dutch and the USA is quite good. The Dutch people didnt exist, the Netherlands as a country didnt exist, and yet nobody complains about the Dutch being in the game.
Dutch people didn't spring into existence in one day, as soon as the modern state was created. There's a process of ethnogenesis which takes centuries. And there are layers of common culture which accrue in time that eventually lead to the formation of a common ethnic identification.

I would argue that this hasn't happened for Americans, which is why so many of them are keen to point to their original ethnic roots: lots of Americans identify as Asian-American, African-American, etc. It's because for them ethnogenesis does not seem to have taken place.
Why this happened would be a really interesting research topic with possibly explosive implications.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Dolan wrote:
RefluxSemantic wrote:Did the Dutch really identify as one people in 1500? Im inclined to answer that with no
And who claimed that. What I said is that people used language as a way to differentiate between who were foreigners and who were part of "the people". And different Germanic peoples used a variation of the old High German diutisc (which actually meant "of the people", referring to the Germanic language spoken by the common people, as opposed to a language like Latin used by the learned and the higher classes).

But what do you think it meant when Germanic peoples used some variation of Walhaz (or Walsche as it was in Old Dutch) to call foreigners who spoke a Celtic or Latin-based language? It meant "those guys are not of our people, they are foreigners". This gives you some insight into how ethnic identification worked back then. For Hellenistic Greeks it was also centered around culture, language and being a citizen of a particular city-state. Ancient Greeks called "barbars" those people whose language sounded like frog vocalisations (bar bar), so the reason why they were seen as a different people was primarily the language and other differences in social customs and practices.

Don't simplify the argument, because history is a lot more complicated than just "hurr, proto-Dutch people didn't identify specifically as something they called Dutch", because I never claimed they did. Though, they did use a root of the word that later became "Dutch" to signify "of our people, of the people" (Old Dutch: thiudisc, Middle Dutch: dietsch, duutsch, etc). But it was something implied, they didn't wear it as a social badge, like what we call today nationality. Simply because there was no political entity that was labelled like that and that they could identify with. Identification works like in sports, someone identifies with "team green" if Team Green actually exists for a long enough period of time.
It's just to give an example of a civ in the game that didn't really exist in any shape of form in the 15th and even 16th century. To counter the argument that the Americans didn't exist as a 'people'.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by Dolan »

Are you saying that the history of Dutch people is just as old as the history of American people?
Or that they're so similar that these peoples are basically just as old in terms of duration?
Why do many Americans identify as Irish-American, African-American, Asian-American.
Is there a similar thing in NL to a significant extent? Do you have lots of people identifying as Polish-Dutch, French-Dutch, Algerian-Dutch, etc?
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Dolan wrote:Are you saying that the history of Dutch people is just as old as the history of American people?
Or that they're so similar that these peoples are basically just as old in terms of duration?
Why do many Americans identify as Irish-American, African-American, Asian-American.
Is there a similar thing in NL to a significant extent? Do you have lots of people identifying as Polish-Dutch, French-Dutch, Algerian-Dutch, etc?
No, but what I'm saying is that any mention of 'Dutch' history starts after the starting date of aoe3. I haven't ever really seen anything that implies there was any sort of Dutch identity or even a Dutch people in 1492. This is really arbitrary, I know, but it's the core of some of the anti-USA reasoning.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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Stay on the topic gentlemen.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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RefluxSemantic wrote:No, but what I'm saying is that any mention of 'Dutch' history starts after the starting date of aoe3. I haven't ever really seen anything that implies there was any sort of Dutch identity or even a Dutch people in 1492. This is really arbitrary, I know, but it's the core of some of the anti-USA reasoning.
There's no official starting date for AOE3 content, boundaries are blurry to allow enough latitude to include as many civs as possible.
I think, in general, they set the theme of the game to start from medieval age and go as late as the dawn of modern, industrial age.

I don't think I argued against including USA as a civ, tho I think I did say it doesn't fit the pattern that was used for other civs.
Historians also refer to the pre-national stage of a people, like when they talk about medieval French, they call it Frankish or Old French.
That's also part of the history of French people and I bet there's something similar for Dutch people too.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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It's not "the French nation" which fought with pikes and bows, it's the medieval Frankish people who used those kinds of units.
And they had no concept of being part of the French nation or having a common French identity, but still they're part of French people's history.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

Post by RefluxSemantic »

Dolan wrote:
RefluxSemantic wrote:No, but what I'm saying is that any mention of 'Dutch' history starts after the starting date of aoe3. I haven't ever really seen anything that implies there was any sort of Dutch identity or even a Dutch people in 1492. This is really arbitrary, I know, but it's the core of some of the anti-USA reasoning.
There's no official starting date for AOE3 content, boundaries are blurry to allow enough latitude to include as many civs as possible.
I think, in general, they set the theme of the game to start from medieval age and go as late as the dawn of modern, industrial age.

I don't think I argued against including USA as a civ, tho I think I did say it doesn't fit the pattern that was used for other civs.
Historians also refer to the pre-national stage of a people, like when they talk about medieval French, they call them Frankish or Old French.
That's also part of the history of French people and I bet there's something similar for Dutch people too.
I was always responding to some of Duckzilla's arguments. I don't really think the old Dutch really exist tbh. If they did exist, they were as Dutch as they were Germanic. After all, weren't most regions part of the HRE just like the other Germanic people. I feel like the Dutch history really does start somewhere after the start of aoe3. And as far as historic accuracy of aoe3 goes, I'm quite convinced it must have started before the Aztec empire ended ;)

Overall I just brought up the Dutch because I think it's similar to the USA. We didn't exist at the start of the game, the Dutch identity or even the Dutch people didn't really exist. We were just another germanic tribe.

Btw, earlier on you were talking about some idea that all the Dutch would feel like they're Dutch and not like some Americans who might identify as something else and that's actually also not really the case. I think many people in Friesland identify as Frisian first, and Dutch second. Which makes sense as we haven't been a country for very long.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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RefluxSemantic wrote:I was always responding to some of Duckzilla's arguments. I don't really think the old Dutch really exist tbh. If they did exist, they were as Dutch as they were Germanic. After all, weren't most regions part of the HRE just like the other Germanic people. I feel like the Dutch history really does start somewhere after the start of aoe3. And as far as historic accuracy of aoe3 goes, I'm quite convinced it must have started before the Aztec empire ended ;)
Well yea, but you know each Germanic tribe had its own identity. Like the Goths and the Avars had their own military elite, German vernacular, flag, and their ethnic fate was different. Goths got assimilated in other Euro peoples, Avars too. The Dutch weren't so much, that's why they exist today as a distinct people with a Germanic language and that aren't simply Germans with a different German vernacular. You're much more distinct from Germans than some local blends of Germans (Bavarians, Thuringians) are between themselves, though some people like the Frisians might be an ethnic bridge between you and Germans.
Overall I just brought up the Dutch because I think it's similar to the USA. We didn't exist at the start of the game, the Dutch identity or even the Dutch people didn't really exist. We were just another germanic tribe.
By the same token, French identity didn't exist at the start of the historical period that AOE3 encompasses, so "the French are like Americans", a very young nation, they didn't even know who they were before the 17th century, right. Doesn't work like that. The USA simply doesn't have any medieval history. In fact the term "medieval" doesn't even make sense outside Europe, it's a term that appeared in Europe with reference to the "dark ages" after the collapse of the Roman empire. Talking about "medieval China" doesn't make a lot of sense, if someone uses this term they mean whatever happened on the current Chinese territory around European medieval times.
Btw, earlier on you were talking about some idea that all the Dutch would feel like they're Dutch and not like some Americans who might identify as something else and that's actually also not really the case. I think many people in Friesland identify as Frisian first, and Dutch second. Which makes sense as we haven't been a country for very long.
This is a wholly different thing. You're talking about regional identity or local identity vs national identity. The Basques or the Catalans might do the same, but that doesn't mean there's no Spanish history of which they're part.
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Re: Civilization Overview: The United States

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Post by Zutazuta »

Great job on these videos @Aussie_Drongo . As someone with little time, its nice to be able to catch up on the new content without having to do a bunch of reading and analyzing.

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