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Ming dynasty? Sounds like another flash-in-the-pan bunch of forgettable losers if you ask me. 
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Jun 1, 2019 04:41
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So wait, there's a perfectly good explanation for why they're named that. but it's been rendered completely illegible?
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Jun 5, 2019 07:10
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It's pretty interesting how easy Bon is to reform compared to say, Finnic Paganism, or worse, West African paganism.
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Jun 7, 2019 12:42
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Unyielding. Harmonious, Daring. Heirocratic.
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Jun 8, 2019 03:17
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Akratic Method posted:What does building a pyramid get us? I find the idea of building mountains on bigger mountains delightful but I don't want to get something that's a total mechanics waste for us. It literally just lets you build a pyramid great work, which is much the same as other great works except... a pyramid.
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Jun 8, 2019 03:18
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While you're fighting off the invasion you also take a massive levies debuff to represent the majority of your army being in china, too.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:42
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MaxieSatan posted:On the positive side maybe "Bön philosophy," "from Lhasa," etc. will be taken up as whimsical early-20th-century euphemisms, e.g. "she went to college for mathematics but learned much more about Bön philosophy" I can't help but wonder if this means they would be called Lhasabians instead in this timeline.
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Jun 18, 2019 20:09
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A cunning, murderous successor, possessed of world-shaking levels of military acumen. Who turned out to be completely inconsequential, which is about par for the course for CK2.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:58
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PetraCore posted:No warrior wants to go out making GBS threads himself to death. It's more common than you'd think. 
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Jun 24, 2019 04:00
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edit: Whoops wrong thread. So what would be an appropriate name for the head of reformed Bon, if the Dalai Lama is inappropriate?
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Jul 1, 2019 12:22
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The Sandman posted:And now to see how the new dynasty regards Tibet. India nothing, to fight china in CK2 at minimum you need all of india, tibet, transoxania and persia, probably also syria and egypt, just to be safe.
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Jul 15, 2019 06:27
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Our only hopes lie in the Tarascans. Or maybe the Mayans.
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Jul 16, 2019 07:24
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I will forever agitate for the tarascans. Or failing that, the maya.
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Jul 16, 2019 16:04
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The aztec empire in sunset invasion, leaving aside the fact that they were established centuries later, wouldn't resemble anything from our history for a fairly simple reason: by the time it had become as large as an empire it would have to go through horrible rome-like civil wars and reformations to establish a true imperial edifice. The aztec empire is also known as the "triple alliance" because it was, well, an alliance of three city-states that used tributary arrangements to create an unwieldy network of vassal arrangements. By the end of it's life in our timeline, not only was Tenochtitlan's position as foremost among the alliance causing terrible internal problems, the vassals were in open revolt. Cortes's invasion was less like a group of technologically advanced conquerors showing up and dominating and more or less exactly what you get when the equivalent of the social war is hijacked by some overseas idiot who unwittingly kills 90% of the population with plague. Without this happening you get two outcomes with a billion permutations: either Tenochtitlan and the mexica lose, causing the empire to collapse, or they win, but have to reform anyway to create a broader class of citizenship. This isn't even getting into the question of other major groups in the area. In central america there are two major competitors to the mexica in their ability to create a dominating state: the Tarascans or Purépecha people, who had metalworking, unique among all native american peoples at the time as well as a centralized state and the Maya, who were able to establish a federation of city-states that dominated the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula, before it horribly imploded due to succession issues and rebellion.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:21
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The maya were pretty much a greek/itallian style peninsula full of city-states, so I can see that. Then there's the issue of the Tarascans. The Tarascans were basically like no one else in mesoamerica. Their culture was part of that broad milieu, but as far as can be seen, they didn't share gods and their language is a completely different group. But that's just the start. Substantial differences are that they were actually a fully centralized kingdom who exhibited a sense of territory beyond city-state allegiance, unlike the aztec empire. They actually had castle-style fortifications and acted to secure not just vassals and tributary arrangements, but directed territorial conquest. They also, uniquely, were able to actually use metalworking for tools.They're also a bizarre anomaly because they pretty much just showed up one day with no one being able to adequately explain where they came from. So, essentially just northwest of the Aztecs were this centralized kingdom with fortified borders founded by a bunch of people with no relation to the rest of mesoamerica who actually had metal tools. Their methodology and approach was totally unique, in that they essentially were a monarchical state instead of a league of city-states or an alliance with a bunch of tributaries like the Maya or Aztecs respectively. Their approach to warfare was very different from any other part of mesoamerica, because they didn't engage in captive sacrifice, or if they did, they didn't singularly prize it like others did. This leads to them engaging in acts of sabotage or guerrilla warfare or other tactics that were completely unfathomable when the personal objective of a soldier in other armies at the time is to get a captive. For the record: among the Mexica of the time, which is to say, the Aztecs, if you're male, you aren't really a person at all until you gain a war captive and sacrifice them. Until then you are basically completely nothing socially or spiritually and if you die you have absolutely no chance of anything good happening to you. NewMars fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 06:52
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Tarascans are probably a special case: they may very well actually have sailed there from south america around about... now, actually. Meaning that they would probably be in south america without a non-unified mesoamerica to colonize. It's a similar situation with the mexica people entering the valley of mexico. I mean, by any reasonable definition the people invading now would not be aztecs, who would still be wandering about arizona. People have said that they might feasibly be toltecs, but toltecs are literally mythical. I mean, current views on the subject are that Toltecs are actually several different civilizations who've been mythologized into a single one by later peoples. "Real" toltecs may very well just be the people who inhabited the city of Tulla during it's heyday, which was both pretty big and influential but also did not last all that long. Edit: Hmm, actually there's rather more evidence for the Tarascans migrating from Nevada, so they'd far more likely be there right now than South America. NewMars fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 09:23
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More nerding out on north mesoamerican worldviews. Sacrifice. This is the big, important thing. In the worldview of mesoamerican cultures, there is a concept known as the "flower-death." You are supposed to die in the prime of your life. Living old isn't a sign of being wise, it's a sign of being a coward who chose the easy way out of dying of old age. In order to survive the afterlife, you need to die in one of three ways: war, sacrifice or childbirth. War and childbirth are not just considered equivalents for men and women, by the way, they are considered to be literally the same thing as the act of childbirth is considered to be fighting to tear someone from the realm of death into life as the act of war is the opposite. Deaths that weren't one of the three were graded pretty much infinitely. At the bottom of the hierarchy of death and afterlives were old age and disease, the more relatively painless the death, the worse of a person you are. Why this is comes down to the idea of energy in their religious worldview. Much like the second law of thermodynamics, Mexica and their related cultures believed that there is a finite amount of energy in the cosmos that cannot be created or destroyed. In order for the world to keep in motion and avoid destruction this energy must be transferred. The bodies of men were to feed the earth to bring forth new life, but their souls to feed the heavens to sustain the gods. Therefore, sacrifice was considered to be the most worthwhile death. It was never a punishment, but always a reward. You were supposed to avoid being captured, of course, but showing fear at the sacrifice, enough to try to run was thought to be the worst and most taboo kind of act in existence. Most sacrifices weren't captives, though. Mostly they were part of various festivals and celebrations or other cyclic rituals. Part of this includes the sacrifice taking on a godly mantle in costume and acting in character, during which they were believed to literally be an avatar of the god in question. So when depicting sacrifice from mesoamericans, it's important to note that while they might be afraid of the pain, the act is always a positive one. Returning one's life to the gods upholds the order of the cosmos and keeps it from collapsing. Doing this is always a moral thing and to face it with bravery is a display of supreme and upstanding character. The act has to be painful because otherwise it has no meaning, a peaceful death is a worthless life.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:56
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ChaseSP posted:Man that CK2 player must've been pissed when that happened. Sounds pretty fitting to just put in Eu4. It's already in EU4, actually! It's the base start of the game that it begins just after the league of Mayapan imploded and you start as one of the sucessor states with a decision to reform the league once you reform your religion. Kangxi posted:First, thank you for all the nice comments and even more for the effort posts. I know nothing substantial about that part of the world in this time frame, so I've already learned something going over these. Would you mind if I linked to one or two in the table of contents so later readers have a link to the conversation? I would be totally cool with this!
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Jul 18, 2019 03:37
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Speaking of step temples. What are mesoamerican step pyramids and what do they symbolize? They're literally man-made mountains. See, in the Aztec worldview all power flows down from the heaven as rivers, both literal ones and metaphorical ones. Here, the creation of a step pyramid is a mountain by which energy may flow up as a sacrifice and down as divine favor. At the zenith of the pyramid, the mountain touches the heavens, the realm of the gods.These pyramids usually weren't also made as their final height either, usually they'd start as a simple platform in a village that gets raised up as the settlement expands, with layers being built on top of it, so that the interior of an old one is a confusing labyrinth comprised of the generations of buildings it was constructed on top of. A pyramid was the most important structure in a city, capturing it signaled victory for the attackers and utter defeat for the defenders. The aztecs were very big on treating divinity as a very touchy thing. Losing favor like that was a crushing and hopeless defeat, even if you could fight them off just afterwards. Related to that, only priests could see the idols housed at the top room of the pyramid, except during sacred times when the energy of the events protected onlookers, as the energy of the gods was said to cause any who looked directly upon the idol to die instantly or be struck blind, as it was the body of the god on earth. This was not a curse, just an expected result of witnessing that much power without being trained or sacred yourself. Speaking of cities: mesoamerica was a land of cities. Everything was seen as a collection of city-states by the Aztecs. States larger than that were not a thing. States smaller than that did not exist. All villages were attacked to a city, which was the singular political unit. This was true for others such as the Maya as well. However, this was likely not true for the Tarascans, although we know little of them, they seemed to work as a centralized kingdom instead after starting out as an expansionist city state, centralizing in a way alien to the rest of the area. A city, by the way, is differentiated from a village by the presence of a proper pyramid temple as well as the presence of more than one Calpulli, which are the extended clans that made up the world of the aztecs, with equivalents among other cultures in the area. What this means in CK2 terms is that they would likely have a form of feudalism where city holdings are their primary ones, possibly with being able to hold temples like Islamic rulers as well. However, temples in a city and their precincts were the property of the priests and while the head of the empire was a very important sacral personage and so were the heads of most cities, the orders and hierarchies of priests were very separate from administrative ones. As for feudal holdings, it's quite likely they would have no idea what to do with a castle besides using it for a fort. Mesoamerican rulers dwelled in the hearts of their cities, in palace complexes, and fortified the walls of the city instead.
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Jul 18, 2019 17:30
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As I mentioned before, the Tarascans were pretty much the only Mesoamericans who knew metalworking. Them aside though, now it's time for: Potatoes and Maize. Potatoes are a vital crop. You may not realize it, but they are amazingly adaptable and nutritious compared to pretty much everything else. Not that people in Europe actually grew them once they knew of them. Spaniards in the new world refused to eat a crop so associated with the natives and basically no one in Europe would eat them for a number of reasons. First of all was that they were strongly associated with a bloodthirsty heathen civilization. Second was their resemblance to nightshade and last was the fact that they grew underground. All of this basically meant that the only wide-scale adoption of the plant for centuries was as animal fodder. When the plant was finally adopted for human consumption, it caused a population boom due to it's ease of growth, how fit it was for long term storage and nutritional value. Maize on the other hand is less adaptable and not as good for you. But, for mesoamerican civilizations, it was vital, both nutritionally and spiritually. For the Aztecs, maize was considered literally a gift from the gods and the meal of adults. To eat maize was when a child was no longer considered a child. This means that when they die they would have the afterlife of adults, instead of their soul being sent back to the heaven of children and the unborn to await rebirth, they would make the journey along the underworld like anyone else to reach a final fate. This is because Maize is a gift from the gods and to accept it is to accept your place in the endless interchange of energy that revitalizes the cosmos. One could, theoretically, not eat maize, but to do so would be immensely suspect, not to mention mark you out as a very infantalized person, who desires the life and death of a child and not that of an adult.
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Jul 19, 2019 05:26
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The Tarascans seemed to know that what they had was exceptional in terms of metalworking, to the extent that they actually had a system of keeping the mines where the ore was extracted separate from the place where it was worked, which was also separate from the places where it was traded, so that no one could learn their secrets.
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Jul 19, 2019 06:28
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Speaking of Ball Court Games: the Ball Game. Yes, that's what it's called. Every culture had a different name for it and every one of them played in a slightly different to radically different way across mesoamerica. Tarascans, Aztecs, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Highland and Lowland Maya, they all played the game and it was of immense spiritual meaning to all of them. The games were played with a ball made entirely from rubber, making it extremely heavy, which means it could easily injure or even kill a player. Points were gained by hitting the ball off the opposing wall and the teams were made of 2-4 players each. To the stone ballcourt, the only significant change ever made to it was the addition of stone rings on each side of the court, with passing the ball through them being an instant though incredibly rare win. What the ball game meant symbolically is unknown, just that it was incredibly important. Being as mesoamerica is a very large and heterogeneous place, it may well be anything from a proxy of war, to symbolically representing the movement of the heavens with the ball as the sun, a renewal of the world's fertility, or even a more sort of general duality with the contest being between day and night, or life and death. A single exception to this obscurity is among the Highland Maya, who indeed saw it as a struggle between life and death and a process of renewal thereby. Specifically, in their myths the great hero twins Hunahpú and Xbalanqué played the game, enraging the lords of Xibalba, the underworld, who had killed the twin's father and uncle. The lords of Xibalba summoned them to the underworld and engaged them in trials and a contest of the ball game with the intent of killing them. However, the twins tricked and defeated the lords of the underworld, humiliating them so much that Xibalba was to no longer be a "place of greatness" and that it's lords were to be never given offerings or worship again. A somewhat obvious reading of this is that it is also a representation of older deities connected to Xibalba being replaced by newer ones, possibly imported from the lowland Maya, though, really that's just speculation from me.
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Jul 19, 2019 08:53
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One of the things that it's important to know about north america is that contrary to a lot of stereotypes, there were many, many settled people and urban sites there. The reason they vanished was entirely because of plague, too. EU4 does a terrible job of showing this, having them be semi-migratory at a point when they were settled and often extensive in their political and economic networks. However, it was either do that or have a player's entire nation literally vanish the moment some European expedition walks through. It can't be stated enough that European expansionism was actually the lesser threat: just contact with a European expedition often destroyed entire civilizations, annihilating towns and cities to the point where when European settlers arrived to the area, the people still living there had forgotten that they'd built the mounds that cities were once on. If plague of this scale is not a thing, the entire scenario of colonization in EU4 will be completely different: no more "empty spaces" to take.
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Jul 20, 2019 04:50
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Lands of red and gold is the best. I might be biased though, considering I am Aboriginal Australian.
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Jul 20, 2019 12:41
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I didn't say it made sense, just that it happened and was a reason given. Incidentally, they were also nicknamed "the devil's apples."
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Jul 22, 2019 02:49
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Relating to the aztec reformation: Having temporal leadership is very much in line with how the Aztec empire was run: however calling it's leader a Tlatoani is incorrect. Tlatoani means king, the leader of a single city state. The proper leader of the aztec empire is a Huetlatoani, or a paramount king: a king among kings or an emperor. It's also worth noting that they had important ritual properties but were not, in and of themselves, a high priest of any kind. As well, the empire was technically Diarchial, with the Huetlatoani being responsible for the external affairs, but the actual management of Tenochtitlan, the only true part of the empire, being the responsibility of the Cihuacoatl, who was seen as the "female" to the Huetlatoani's "male." It's also worth noting that the idea of a holy order called the Cult of Huītzilōpōchtli is somewhat nonsensical. Huītzilōpōchtli was actually a rather provincial deity in that he was exclusively the deity of the city of Tenochtitlan. While he was the "main deity" of the aztec empire in that he was the patron of the Mexica people, he was considered an equal of Tlaloc, the rain, to them. This was actually despite the efforts of the architect of the triple alliance, Tlacaelel, who elevated him to displace the old solar deity and actually tried to make an empire instead of a network of tributaries. Outside of the Mexica he wasn't really worshiped as far as I can tell. But more importantly: the Aztecs already had religious orders of warriors. Anywhere between four and two of them, in fact. In order of prestige they were: the shorn ones, the otomie, the eagle warriors and the jaguar warriors. Sadly, we don't know if the former two were dedicated to any god (with the otomie actually seeming to be named after and possibly comprised of a mercenary ethnicity that was absorbed into the Mexica), but the latter two were definitely dedicated to Nanahuatzin and Tecuciztecatl respectively. Religion was already heavily integrated into their warfare besides this, so the idea of a holy order arising in an army that is basically a group of holy orders anyway is sort of hard to picture.
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Jul 25, 2019 16:18
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Sampatrick posted:It is not particularly difficult for me to imagine that the Cult of Huītzilōpōchtli could become a warrior society of Tenochtitlan, given the importance of the god within Aztec society. In fact, it being a god so closely aligned with Tenochtitlan specifically makes it even more likely to become an organ of the state, no? Like, a Cult of Tlaloc would be just as dumb because Tlaloc wasn't really a war God and Huītzilōpōchtli very much is. That's not really the problem. The problem is that the aztec warrior societies are already an arm of the state intimately connected with the leadership, while also being of extreme religious importance.
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Jul 25, 2019 17:32
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Sampatrick posted:Yes, so in the context of a reformation of Aztec religion, it would make sense for there to be a variety of changes and I'd imagine that the formation or dissolution of warrior societies would be one of the first places where change is made. Like, if you imagine the reformation as being a centralization of religious authority around a specifically Aztec state, then it would make sense to at the same time try to make other aspects of the state also specifically Aztec. The problem is that these societies were already specifically aztec: the most prestigious ones were headquartered and lived in the same palace as the Hueytlolanti. Like, they're already pre-centralized around the authority of the aztec state there. Although this is all pretty bunk considering the existing absurdity of... everything to do with SI.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:33
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Rody One Half posted:I can't believe that paradox of all companies would half rear end on history It's enough to rip away your ability to feel human.
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Jul 25, 2019 23:59
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Godspeed you! Mad khantun.
NewMars fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 29, 2019 03:44
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Truly, it's a mystery for the ages. On a completely unrelated note, I like the text you get for putting up a runestone to your parents if you murdered them, declaiming that you most certainly had no part in their sudden and inexplicable demise.
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Jul 30, 2019 03:01
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...Well, that went in an unexpected direction.
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Aug 2, 2019 01:39
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They're not vassalized to china, they''re tributaries: they pay some of their tax to them and can get chinese reinforcements if attacked.
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Aug 2, 2019 07:10
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QuoProQuid posted:So, it's been a while since I played with Sunset Invasion activated. How do the Aztecs generally fair when they invade this early? Is there going to just be a big, pink blob over the western side of the map for the rest of the game or will they eventually fracture and recede? From my experiences they can go either way, but given that they actually reformed, which I've never seen them do, it's all new territory as far as I'm concerned.
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Aug 3, 2019 04:12
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Bloodly posted:Sounds like Denmark was going for 'The Outside Bet', but the era's wrong. The really outside bet then?
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Aug 5, 2019 08:54
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I mean, yeah, it'd be insanely good trade there with the gigantic imperial projects all over the east right now. Not to mention refugees fleeing the incessant wars of conquest from, well, us and the Mongols both.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:40
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The world is changing it seems, and not for the better. 
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Aug 14, 2019 03:14
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Finnic doesn't either, because it's so very, very spread out and the religion is extremely defensive and not inclined to spread. Baltic does a lot though, because all it's holy sites are basically in the one kingdom.
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Aug 15, 2019 01:26
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I'm surprised that the aztecs took such a kicking. That plague must really have been bad.
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Aug 25, 2019 07:04
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I wonder how the Zaghawa pope even got to Italy.
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Aug 29, 2019 04:26
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