Islam is the Light: Azerbaijan Paradox Mega-LP

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Islam is the Light: Azerbaijan Paradox Mega-LP

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

DocFrance posted:

What does the Koran say about moneylending?

Generally, it's pretty bad, and has remained so, unlike in the West.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2011 05:46

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:05

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Ilanin posted:

The Islamic world is much less unified

And additionally, they weren't hit nearly so hard by the Mongols as they were OTL - still pretty bad, but they had a somewhat successful reconquest which can be romanticised. Those two factors might well lead to a much more open and outward looking Islamic world than OTL, and potentially a less aggressive one, especially given the lack of European interest in crusading against Islam in the later part of CK. All of which suggests that Islamic (and, for that matter, Christian) co-tolerance is making some progress. With no unified Islamic power, Italy will dominate the Mediterranean anyway (probably - I suppose Egypt and Syria have a little to say about that, but probably not a lot), so there's less need in their few for Holy Leagues, unless, of course, the Sultans won't give them access to the markets in Damascus or Alexandria. That could go either way.

The European Age of Discovery was largely driven by the Ottomans' blockade of the Middle East; considering the fractured nature of the Muslim world and a powerful Italy, there may be less of an impulse to go out exploring for everyone.

In addition, if Italy takes Rome, what happens to Catholicism? If it happens before the Protestant Reformation, and there's not an internationally recognized successor, you might end up with a radically decentralized system of churches, throwing everything after 1450 completely out the window, up to and including one of the major sources of colonists in the Americas.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 04:23

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

1) Did Timur die during his first military campaign? - No.
2) Did Zabulistan successfully resist the Ghaznavid invasion? - Yes.
3) Did the Mongol invasion of Japan succeed in reaching the island? - No, but maybe the Yuan Dynasty took Hokkaido.
4) Did the megafauna in Australia/New Zealand survive human migration into the continent? - Only in New Zealand. (could be due to a complete lack of humans; the Maori don't show up until about the 1300s CE)
5) Did Sundiata Keita die in exile? No.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 15:33

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Leperflesh posted:

1 and 2 are implausible but also don't necessarily lead to megafauna survival; in no other place that humans colonized, did the megafauna wholly avoid extinctions. (Africa was not colonized by humans, and OK, indian elephants survived too, perhaps because human ancestors arrived there particularly early, I dunno), so one could easily argue that even without the burning, any human culture would have wiped out those animals in one way or another. And 3 is basically handwaving.

This is exactly why I think an uninhabited NZ compromise is far more plausible.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2011 01:58

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

C, riba what riba?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 02:35

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

# ¿ Oct 2, 2011 02:39

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Gov: A
Idea: C

# ¿ Oct 6, 2011 11:42

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Now that we have Morocco, the obvious thing to do is liberate al-Andalus. :hist101:

# ¿ Oct 7, 2011 11:42

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Power to the people _{already in charge}!

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 03:52

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Honestly, I think all this internal tension is exciting and should be reflected in the narrative somehow.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 21:46

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

# ¿ Dec 5, 2011 02:37

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

The entire notion of continental philosophy, especially anything derived from Hegel, has proven itself by most standards to be quite a Bad Thing, as seen from the mountains of corpses in the twentieth century.

Part of the reason for this is that historicist thought tends to be inherently anti-scientific; you end up with highly eschatological systems which can be described as at least para-religious (Juche comes to mind).

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 13:11

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

We really should just convert to Orthodox and get on with it; all the good provinces are on their side.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2012 07:04

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Flavius Belisarius posted:

That's the gamey kind of move Wiz is trying to avoid, or so I would assume. Plus, having an entire Shura suddenly convert is much less likely than a single monarch.

I more meant that in a sense that they'd resent their "rulers" and might force the issue with their hegemony.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2012 11:13

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

I know it's unpopular, but do we want rebels messing up our recent gains?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 14:09

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

sniper4625 posted:

I'm pretty sure Wiz has managed to play more CK2 MP since release than actual time elapsed since,

You might call that... a Paradox. :smug:

# ¿ Mar 13, 2012 19:36

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Let's finish this before EU4!

(oh, Paradox)

# ¿ Aug 14, 2012 16:39

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

For reference, the book 1421 was literally just the author making poo poo up.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2012 20:05

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Phlegmish posted:

I would say the era of virtually uncontested European global dominance was limited to the period between the early 19th century and 1945. That's still a century and a half, of course. My point is that the fact that the West was on the rise from the Renaissance on doesn't mean they were physically dominating the rest of the world with the greatest of ease.

That timing probably indicates the fast take-off of Western Europe was due to the capital obtained from the New World paying off with both the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution directly leading into the Napoleonic era.

Once you have the scientific method, your rate of technological progress is going to quickly leave everyone else behind for a few decades until they catch on.

So European dominance really doesn't seem that inevitable. Given that the expansion of Islam was essentially proto-colonialism, and Islamic science was much more advanced until the Renaissance, I bet that if you sent a chronoassassin to kill al-Ghazali, we'd end up with a eerily parallel world that, nine times out of ten, would end up with a center of power much more southeasterly.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2012 14:05

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Servant posted:

The more you complicate the explanation for why one continent dominates over another, the less likely it is for your explanation to ever be falsified or proven wrong. And if it can never be proven wrong, then it could never be proven right either.

In principle, we could falsify or verify it if we had a sufficiently powerful and accurate simulation of an Earth-like planet and its inhabitants, and then ran it several times with different variables.

But, alas, such experimental sociology is far off, so we are stuck with simple induction from a small sample size, so it may be best to implicitly qualify any given hypothesis about historical dynamics given in this context with "the author believes this there is slightly greater prior probability for this hypothesis compared to similarly complex alternatives".

# ¿ Aug 30, 2012 16:02

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

MaybeNever posted:

Uncivilized refers to all non-westernized nations no matter how far along they are, while primitive is a more specific term for a nation that has zero (or maybe just 1-2, I forget the exact cut-off) westernization upgrades. At a certain point of westernization, a primitive nation will become "partially westernized", and, after finishing the process, a civilized nation. Most uncivs will be nothing but colony fodder, but some have a good shot at westernizing. Japan and China, mostly.

I'm kind of surprised that the Mali Empire has this status, considering its OTL ludicrous wealth and TTL survival. Though I guess it moved sort of southwards.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2013 12:31

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

Rincewind posted:

It doesn't really seem super out there that the elites of an empire would be comfortably bilingual, though. Look at how Greek and Latin co-existed in the Roman Empire, for example.

I could imagine Arabic displacing whatever the Zhen used to speak; at the end of the day, it is easier to write and read, and other countries speak and write it.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2013 00:34

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:05

Cardinal Ximenez: Oct 25, 2008; "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault."

ABB

# ¿ Dec 23, 2013 19:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Islam is the Light: Azerbaijan Paradox Mega-LP