African Civ Design Expectations

[Dolan]

Well, in general, they didn't make big fancy buildings, I don't even have to try to make this point because all you have to do is just look at what's there. The few ones that did get built were the product of a few rich kingdoms. And what do rulers do when they have a lot of resources, such as gold which they trade in exchange for other materials? They get the taste of power and want this reflected in their status, in how they live, they want to emulate rulers from other kingdoms, inasmuch as they know about them.

source pls, for this super broad generalization about an entire continent that you know almost nothing about.

Take a look at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_Africa

And tell me how many are native architecture and how many are just castles and forts built by various colonists (Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, etc).

They often visit those other places or have travellers sent there, which describe what they saw there. And that's how they get such ideas that they need to build some of those big structures that were seen elsewhere. But again, these were not characteristic of most of Africa's architecture. Sure, you can find maybe one or two in Ethiopia, due to their proximity to the Middle East, from which they got influenced. That's the case for those nations in the "horn of Africa", like Ethiopia and Somalia.

source pls. Why do you assume that Ethiopian rulers were influenced by outsiders, and not the other way around? Ethiopia has a unique tradition of monumental architecture going back possibly as far as 1000 BC, with the proto-Aksumite Dmt kingdom. There's two things here: Ethiopian architecture is very distinct and unique, as the country with one of the oldest traditions of Christianity in the world. It's quite different from much of the architecture on Somalia and the East African coast, which was more influenced by Islamic art styles but also was equally an indigenous tradition and not just a copy. There are many features of East African monumental architecture that are found nowhere else in the Islamic world, like porites coral carved niches, pillar tombs, and mosques without minarets. The earliest stone structures in East Africa were built directly on top of, and in the same form as, pre-Islamic wooden buildings. The idea that African elites just copied buildings from elsewhere is fundamentally incorrect. I mostly know about the East African examples but I would bet it's the same situation in West Africa as well.

You're replying to a strawman here, I wasn't arguing about Ethiopian architecture in general, but about the fact that they're featured in the game using a castle building, and that's all based just on one single little fort built in Ethiopia under the influence of Middle Eastern or Asian cultures. I was arguing that they are forcing this meme "AOE game with castles" onto regions of the world whose civilisations weren't really defined by this.

But if you go to Angola or Zambia, you won't find any castles or forts built by natives.

What does that have to do with anything? They are making Hausa and Ethiopia civs so this is irelevant.

I was arguing again that they're forcing this idea of game with castles onto a region whose civilisations weren't really characterised by it.

I'm not saying this to imply anything about the devs and SJW stuff, just pointing out that they're forcing this idea of medieval age and castle architecture on the rest of the world, when the medieval era didn't exist outside Europe, it's a European historical concept. It would be like the Chinese making a game about the Han dynasty with buildings from that era then adding civs from all around the world and trying to shoehorn their architecture to look like Han buildings. Something like that.

Who said anything about the medieval era? AoE3 is a colonial era game, and Ethiopians and Hausa people in the colonial period were building large stone and mudbrick fortifications across their kingdoms, and that's whats reflected in the sneak peak.

AOE3 might be officially themed around colonialism but it kinda starts where AOE2 left off. What are the most rudimentary types of units you see in the "colonial age" or whatever it's called now (commerce age?)? Pikes and bows were typically medieval units, that's why they're featured so prominently in AOE2. However, these types of units didn't simply disappear at the end of the medieval age. For a while still, they continued to be used even in early modern armies (such as Landsknecht in the HRE armies). Gunpowder and artillery were gradually introduced and developed in Europe at least from the 13th century, if not earlier. By the time the first colonial expeditions were launched by the Portuguese (early 15th century), cannons had already been included in the arsenal of some European armies.



So there wasn't a clean and clear break from the medieval era even up to the 16th century, they were still using pikes and bows even during the colonial age. New types of weapons appeared, which harnessed the power of explosives (black powder) and powered much of the effort launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish to establish new sea trading routes, as a result of which they established new colonial empires. But those legacy weapons, swords, bows, pikes, were still used, despite the fact that they defined much of the medieval era type of warfare. Just as castles and fortifications were another defining feature of medieval warfare logistics, which was also born out of that specific structure of power in each territory, with kings that were actually quite weak and feudal lords, which controlled a fiefdom. These local lords built castles in order to fortify their local power and resist any invasions. That's why I said that this particular warfare style, which involved castles, pikes, bows, forts, is typical of the medieval age in Europe and some parts of Asia (like the Sassanid empire). Trying to make a civ look like they were a civilisation of castles, fortresses is just weird, when at best, they just had one little fort inspired by Middle East and Asian structures (including Indian ones).

[oxaloacetate]

Africa isn't European. #changemymind

[iNcog]

some things never change

[duckzilla]

some things never change

Like Africa not having castles?

[Dolan]

Fiction is one helluva drug

[Squamiger]

Well, in general, they didn't make big fancy buildings, I don't even have to try to make this point because all you have to do is just look at what's there. The few ones that did get built were the product of a few rich kingdoms. And what do rulers do when they have a lot of resources, such as gold which they trade in exchange for other materials? They get the taste of power and want this reflected in their status, in how they live, they want to emulate rulers from other kingdoms, inasmuch as they know about them.

source pls, for this super broad generalization about an entire continent that you know almost nothing about.

Take a look at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_Africa

And tell me how many are native architecture and how many are just castles and forts built by various colonists (Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, etc).

They often visit those other places or have travellers sent there, which describe what they saw there. And that's how they get such ideas that they need to build some of those big structures that were seen elsewhere. But again, these were not characteristic of most of Africa's architecture. Sure, you can find maybe one or two in Ethiopia, due to their proximity to the Middle East, from which they got influenced. That's the case for those nations in the "horn of Africa", like Ethiopia and Somalia.

source pls. Why do you assume that Ethiopian rulers were influenced by outsiders, and not the other way around? Ethiopia has a unique tradition of monumental architecture going back possibly as far as 1000 BC, with the proto-Aksumite Dmt kingdom. There's two things here: Ethiopian architecture is very distinct and unique, as the country with one of the oldest traditions of Christianity in the world. It's quite different from much of the architecture on Somalia and the East African coast, which was more influenced by Islamic art styles but also was equally an indigenous tradition and not just a copy. There are many features of East African monumental architecture that are found nowhere else in the Islamic world, like porites coral carved niches, pillar tombs, and mosques without minarets. The earliest stone structures in East Africa were built directly on top of, and in the same form as, pre-Islamic wooden buildings. The idea that African elites just copied buildings from elsewhere is fundamentally incorrect. I mostly know about the East African examples but I would bet it's the same situation in West Africa as well.

You're replying to a strawman here, I wasn't arguing about Ethiopian architecture in general, but about the fact that they're featured in the game using a castle building, and that's all based just on one single little fort built in Ethiopia under the influence of Middle Eastern or Asian cultures. I was arguing that they are forcing this meme "AOE game with castles" onto regions of the world whose civilisations weren't really defined by this.

But if you go to Angola or Zambia, you won't find any castles or forts built by natives.

What does that have to do with anything? They are making Hausa and Ethiopia civs so this is irelevant.

I was arguing again that they're forcing this idea of game with castles onto a region whose civilisations weren't really characterised by it.

I'm not saying this to imply anything about the devs and SJW stuff, just pointing out that they're forcing this idea of medieval age and castle architecture on the rest of the world, when the medieval era didn't exist outside Europe, it's a European historical concept. It would be like the Chinese making a game about the Han dynasty with buildings from that era then adding civs from all around the world and trying to shoehorn their architecture to look like Han buildings. Something like that.

Who said anything about the medieval era? AoE3 is a colonial era game, and Ethiopians and Hausa people in the colonial period were building large stone and mudbrick fortifications across their kingdoms, and that's whats reflected in the sneak peak.

AOE3 might be officially themed around colonialism but it kinda starts where AOE2 left off. What are the most rudimentary types of units you see in the "colonial age" or whatever it's called now (commerce age?)? Pikes and bows were typically medieval units, that's why they're featured so prominently in AOE2. However, these types of units didn't simply disappear at the end of the medieval age. For a while still, they continued to be used even in early modern armies (such as Landsknecht in the HRE armies). Gunpowder and artillery were gradually introduced and developed in Europe at least from the 13th century, if not earlier. By the time the first colonial expeditions were launched by the Portuguese (early 15th century), cannons had already been included in the arsenal of some European armies.



So there wasn't a clean and clear break from the medieval era even up to the 16th century, they were still using pikes and bows even during the colonial age. New types of weapons appeared, which harnessed the power of explosives (black powder) and powered much of the effort launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish to establish new sea trading routes, as a result of which they established new colonial empires. But those legacy weapons, swords, bows, pikes, were still used, despite the fact that they defined much of the medieval era type of warfare. Just as castles and fortifications were another defining feature of medieval warfare logistics, which was also born out of that specific structure of power in each territory, with kings that were actually quite weak and feudal lords, which controlled a fiefdom. These local lords built castles in order to fortify their local power and resist any invasions. That's why I said that this particular warfare style, which involved castles, pikes, bows, forts, is typical of the medieval age in Europe and some parts of Asia (like the Sassanid empire). Trying to make a civ look like they were a civilisation of castles, fortresses is just weird, when at best, they just had one little fort inspired by Middle East and Asian structures (including Indian ones).

none of this is relevant to what we were talking about. Initially you just pointed out the fortress in the sneak peak and said "there's no buildings in Africa like this" and then I pointed out that the structure is in fact modeled on a very real castle in Ethiopia called Fasil Ghebbi, which makes a lot of sense because it's a sneak peek of the ETHIOPIAN CIV, not just "Africa". All this other bullshit you're talking about castles and the medieval period and gunpowder is totally irrelevant.

[yurashic]

That castle doesn't look like anything built in Africa.
Those that were built in North Africa are mostly mosques or forts built by Arabs.

Outside North Africa, at most you can find structures like this one from Mali, that was also built under the influence of Islamic culture:



I don't know why they're trying to shape this African civ on the blueprint of medieval Euro civs, with big forts and castles, because it doesn't reflect much what's on the ground.

That's a mud pyramid mosque like those you can build in Civilization V. Do you know it from that game like I do? :)

[Dolan]

@Squamiger I didn't say there are no such buildings in Africa (or Ethiopia), I think I said there are very few such buildings (it's like one in Ethiopia?) and those that have been made were not really representative of local culture. Which made be believe devs added a civ like that just for the commercial potential, to add some new exotic civ.

@yurashic Haven't played Civ, I think I tried Civ 4 once, but the turn-based part seemed too slow. I like faster games. Which civ had this mud pyramid mosque in Civ V?

[duckzilla]

Haven't played Civ, I think I tried Civ 4 once, but the turn-based part seemed too slow. I like faster games. Which civ had this mud pyramid mosque in Civ V?

Songhai, which was an empire in the upper Niger region just as Mali.

[Lukas_L99]

Idk why ethiopia is such a big candidate, weren’t they pretty irrelevant in the AoE3 era (~1550~1860)?

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Idk why ethiopia is such a big candidate, weren’t they pretty irrelevant in the AoE3 era (~1550~1860)?

One of a handful* of nations that managed to avoid colonisation entirely.

*3 if my memory is right.

[Squamiger]

@Squamiger I didn't say there are no such buildings in Africa (or Ethiopia), I think I said there are very few such buildings (it's like one in Ethiopia?) and those that have been made were not really representative of local culture. Which made be believe devs added a civ like that just for the commercial potential, to add some new exotic civ.

@yurashic Haven't played Civ, I think I tried Civ 4 once, but the turn-based part seemed too slow. I like faster games. Which civ had this mud pyramid mosque in Civ V?

you wrote, to quote "That castle doesn't look like anything built in Africa"

[Dolan]

Well yeah, I meant that the style of buildings appears like a blend of influences from other cultures.
Which in itself is not a bad thing, my country didn't develop its own kind of architecture either. It would be a stretch to say there is a Romanian type of castle.

[Squamiger]

Nope, that's not what your initial post meant at all, idk why you are constantly just shifting the discussion instead of admitting you were wrong

[helln00]

Idk why ethiopia is such a big candidate, weren’t they pretty irrelevant in the AoE3 era (~1550~1860)?

They were relevant for the wars in the indian ocean and the horn of Africa, I think mostly between the Ottomans and the Portuguese as a christian ally, and then of course later fighting against Italy.

[helln00]

Nope, that's not what your initial post meant at all, idk why you are constantly just shifting the discussion instead of admitting you were wrong

You aint gonna get that out of him, he doesn't do that

[duckzilla]

That castle doesn't look like anything built in Africa.
Those that were built in North Africa are mostly mosques or forts built by Arabs.

Outside North Africa, at most you can find structures like this one from Mali, that was also built under the influence of Islamic culture:

I don't know why they're trying to shape this African civ on the blueprint of medieval Euro civs, with big forts and castles, because it doesn't reflect much what's on the ground.

I agree that there are few examples for forts, castles and the like having been built in Africa by kingdoms/empires originating from the area. However, I think that it is important to ask why that is the case.

From my limited knowledge of African history, I got the impression that there has been a number of impressive empires that could have constructed something similar. Three aspects should be important. Firstly, the reason to construct a heavily fortified structure. In Europe, the reasons for building castles were usually strategic: people wanted protection from raids, a protected place for troops, armories and valuables, and to complicate/slow down the conquest of an area. Similar can be said, I guess, about forts in a colonial setting. In Africa, the need for this kind of structures might have been lower, since, in my impression, African empires did not have many local competitors anymore, somewhat similar to the parts of the Roman Empire that were far away from frontiers and only began to construct defensive structures when the civil wars of the 3rd century brought strife into their direct neighborhood.

Secondly, a society needs to create sufficient economic surplus to be able to devote enough energy into the construction of complex structures like castles and forts. In times when areas like the upper Niger were not unified, the societal economic surplus might not have been high enough to think about the creation of long-lasting fortified structures as defending the limited resources was less profitable than trying to conquer those of someone else. Population density could be an interesting indicator here.

Thirdly, to construct structures like castles with lasting material you will need material that actually lasts. This is not necessarily given everywhere.

Whatever may be the reason, the more important point for the game is that we are rather looking at what-if scenarios with regard to the addition of African civilizations, partially similar to the Aztecs. An example could be the story of Abu Bakr of Mali who is said to have sailed across the Atlantic ocean. What if he or a successor would have succeeded, thereby making the construction of fortifications a necessity, e.g. for defense against the Spanish, as well as enabling doing so in the first place, e.g. by colonies contributing the necessary funds and building materials?

In such a world, we might have seen fortifications similar to what the Europeans constructed as it seems to have been a dominant design and developed out of necessity. Now how would these fortifications, that would have had the same purpose as European ones, look? I think it is straight forward to take African, e.g. Hausan, building designs and extrapolate them into fortified structures. Makes sense to me.

[Dolan]

Secondly, a society needs to create sufficient economic surplus to be able to devote enough energy into the construction of complex structures like castles and forts.

This is the main reason why we don't see civilisations with castles in Africa that developed their own architecture. Castles were the most expensive thing you could build and own back then, because it involved such a massive effort of sourcing materials, finding engineers and architects capable of designing a structure based on math and empirical knowledge (or even building/masonry traditions), getting the manpower to organise the building site and actually build it. All this cost a lot of money and took some years to complete, meaning you had to keep these teams paid and supplied at the site for years. Who could afford such a massive financial effort, if not only kingdoms with enough excess in resources that could invest in such structures.

And that's the case for cathedrals too. These were the two main pillars of social order back then, at least in Western Europe: the right to rule (dominus) based on legitimacy derived from god. Those kingdoms were built on sword and faith.

There were a few wealthy kingdoms in Africa here and there (Mali, Ethiopia) and they did build some castle-like structures, but they were mostly built based on models borrowed from neighbouring cultures. So economic excess does seem like a necessary condition for a civilisation to afford building castles, though maybe it's not also a sufficient condition to make them develop these models by themselves. To reach such a level of development that you create your own architectural traditions, you probably need more overall complexity in your entire society, you need to have a society with its own system of writing, with enough occupational specialisation that you have geometers, engineers, scholars, that are able to provide the knowledge foundations for a locally developed building tradition.

[princeofcarthage]

oh dolan is here spewing stuff too, damn I missed it

[Squamiger]

There were a few wealthy kingdoms in Africa here and there (Mali, Ethiopia) and they did build some castle-like structures, but they were mostly built based on models borrowed from neighbouring cultures. So economic excess does seem like a necessary condition for a civilisation to afford building castles, though maybe it's not also a sufficient condition to make them develop these models by themselves. To reach such a level of development that you create your own architectural traditions, you probably need more overall complexity in your entire society, you need to have a society with its own system of writing, with enough occupational specialisation that you have geometers, engineers, scholars, that are able to provide the knowledge foundations for a locally developed building tradition.

I will agree that the kind of intensive castle-building you see in medieval Europe was a relatively unique phenomenon, due to the way that the feudal system worked. It was a system that basically ended with the advent of gunpowder, which is the time period that is relevant to AoE3. But your idea about the necessary requirements for creating an independent architectural tradition is so off base. It's just total speculation without any evidence, or even definitions for terms. What makes an architectural tradition distinct and unique? Any definition that excludes African societies would also exclude European and Asian societies as well, since it's basically impossible to develop architectural forms in isolation. What evidence on the ground does show, is that African kingdoms like the Aksumites in the classical period or the Ethiopian successor states did absolutely develop a distinct and unique architectural tradition. The Ethiopian state from the AoE3 time span of the 1500s to the late 1800s absolutely had the level of social complexity and surplus accumulation necessary to support the engineers and artisans required to make many monumental stone structures, which not only included forts and military buildings but also churches, monasteries, and royal dwellings. The same can be said for Hausa, Somali, Sudanese, Egyptian, Malian, Swahili, Zimbabwean, and north African states during this period. Other societies that didn't necessarily build in stone still produced novel architectural forms and massive monumental structures from earth and wood, like the Buganda kingdom, the Kingdom of the Kongo, or the Dahomey state.

[RefluxSemantic]

(i know your point, your initial point was to not so subtly imply that black Africans couldn't possibly have made big fancy stone buildings and the devs are being SJWs by adding that into the game, but you were wrong so just take this as a moment to learn something)

100% this. Love your posts in this discussion and I wouldnt bother responding to Dolan.

[Squamiger]

Also, a caveat for everything I've said is that even all the archaeological evidence we have today for the architecture of African societies is a fragmented record, which was wiped out and destroyed in the 19th century to a degree by European invaders. The walls of Benin were the largest earthwork structures on earth, and their construction would have absolutely required a society with surplus accumulation and engineering capacities, but they were almost totally demolished by the British in the late 19th century, the same people who would go on to stereotype Africans as primitives living in huts. Ethiopia has some of the best examples of African indigenous architecture partially because it was the one of the few places to escape true colonization.

[Dolan]

There you go, you got so many likes and support in the thread, you're getting high on it, blowing your own cover and exposing what's behind your posts: same old exploitation of the West's colonial guilt.
But that only works on them, not on me since I'm from Eastern Europe. So I think I can be a lot more objective than either of you, since I don't really care about either your Western cucked mentalities, nor about whatever fate your former subjects had. I'm just interested in understanding a phenomenon. And I'm not looking to win any popularity contest on a gaming forum either.

[Lukas_L99]

Idk why ethiopia is such a big candidate, weren’t they pretty irrelevant in the AoE3 era (~1550~1860)?

One of a handful* of nations that managed to avoid colonisation entirely.

*3 if my memory is right.

Right, but they weren't really involved in the time frame AoE is set in?

Idk why ethiopia is such a big candidate, weren’t they pretty irrelevant in the AoE3 era (~1550~1860)?

They were relevant for the wars in the indian ocean and the horn of Africa, I think mostly between the Ottomans and the Portuguese as a christian ally, and then of course later fighting against Italy.

Were they relevant? I didn't really find much about that other than that the Portuguese sent like 2 missionaries, do you have any links for me to read about that?
The war against Italy was almost in 1900, I mean the AoE3 time frame is way earlier.

[Squamiger]

There you go, you got so many likes and support in the thread, you're getting high on it, blowing your own cover and exposing what's behind your posts: same old exploitation of the West's colonial guilt.
But that only works on them, not on me since I'm from Eastern Europe. So I think I can be a lot more objective than either of you, since I don't really care about either your Western cucked mentalities, nor about whatever fate your former subjects had. I'm just interested in understanding a phenomenon. And I'm not looking to win any popularity contest on a gaming forum either.

lol yes get madder and call me a cuck, pls i beg you, its so much better than just admitting you were wrong

also do you even play this game at all