The Case for, Eventually, China

[Stars_and_Bars]

So, just because I've seen it multiple times in this thread:
There is no need for map projections in imperator since the map is actually using a (semi)spherical surface, so there is no need for a projection unlike previous games.

I don't think you understand what the phrase map projection means. It's still a map projection, they're just not projecting it onto a plane. Though that is very good news because it means that almost all of of us won't be able to tell where the distortions occur, and the distortions will be smaller than if they were projecting onto a plane.

Some of us think it's just as disgusting to cut the map off at india.

Think about it. You're making our arguments now.

Arguments are contingent on facts. We could be making similar types of arguments, but your facts can be simply wrong.
Example from earlier: I argued that China shouldn't be included because of how little it interacted with Rome, TheDarkMaster argued that Scandinavia shouldn't be included because of how little it interacted with Rome. They were both the same type of arguments, but the facts were different.

 

[Manbearpig]

Ok, so china tried and eventually succeeded to send some envoys to rome and some romans made it to china maybe. Sounds like an equal stretch.

Or you can just realise that your story doesn't exactly justify the including of ceylon or india beyond an event giving the seleucids some elephants. Does being on the same continent as a vague second hand non-gameplay related relations really justify the current map and not a map with china?

Baktria, one of the most interesting nations on the map, successfully invaded India before a coup fractured them again. The former ruling dynasty of Baktria continued to rule over the former satraps and colonies of Alexandria along the Indus that they had reconquered. That Indo-Greek kingdom would continue to survive for over a century and at its height expanded a good deal into northern India.
You cut India off altogether, and you are cutting off part of Alexander's former empire, a threat to the Selucid powerbase, and forcing the Selucids and Baktria to look to the west for expansion, while simultaneously being able to completely ignore the eastern section of their lands, because they are at the end of the map and nothing there will threaten them.
Even if you include the Indus, then you have a weird section of India barely on the map, where you can't accurately portray the power of India without that tiny area being completely overpowered, and eventually it would still get conquered and the aforementioned end of the map issues would take hold.

 

[klopkr]

@Manbearpig
@Stars_and_Bars

When did we start caring about alexander or india? We're talking about romes world not the second hand effects of its neighbours lands that they never even stepped foot into.

You guys keep drawing the line at what's already in game because it fits your narrative that that's the perfect size of the map for a game about rome when the real underline narrative is that you also want a game about the diadochi. If you admitted that you'd have to give up your original point that the game is only about one nation and not the timeframe in general and all the interactions.

Honestly, we get it you're romaphiles and grecophiles and it's an affront to waste time on things you don't care about even if other people do. You're not arguing from facts and logic, just feelings about what is and isn't important history or gameplay mechanics.

 

[Manbearpig]

The former empire of Alexander is obviously going to be a very strong influence for the game. I never said they had to interact with Rome, either. I think Rome even being in the title of the game was a mistake. It's obviously the focal point, but that isn't the entire game.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

@Manbearpig
@Stars_and_Bars

When did we start caring about alexander or india? We're talking about romes world not the second hand effects of its neighbours lands that they never even stepped foot into.

You guys keep drawing the line at what's already in game because it fits your narrative that that's the perfect size of the map for a game about Rome when the real underline narrative is that you also want a game about the diadochi. If you admitted that you'd have to give up your original point that the game is only about one nation and not the time-frame in general and all the interactions.

Honestly, we get it you're romaphiles and grecophiles and it's an affront to waste time on things you don't care about even if other people do. You're not arguing from facts and logic, just feelings about what is and isn't important history or gameplay mechanics.

Guilty as charged, I suppose. I am a Romanophile, though I think the modern slang would be Romaboo. It's hard not to be when the name of the game is Imperator: Rome and that it's basically the sequel to deeply flawed EU:Rome. Also It's not about the time-frame in general, it's nonsensical to think that. The start date was chosen because of how Rome didn't expand that much before it, and the game ends somewhere during Augustus's reign. That period marks Rome's rise to preeminence the fall of the republic and rise of the empire, not the Mauryan empire, not the kushan empire, and not the Han dynasty. Then again it could be argued that the period also covers most of the diadochi wars. The game starts at a fairly early and interesting part of the wars and it ends with Augustus having won and Marc Antony and Cleopatra (The Last Diadochi ruler) having killed themselves.

I wouldn't lose any sleep if India or China weren't in the game at all. Though having India in the game really does help the Diadochi aspect of the game, and leaving India out really would hurt it. I simple must acknowledge that the Diadochi wars occurred before and during Rome's rise to preeminence. Alexander created the Hellenistic world, and Rome ended the Diadochi kingdoms, though you might argue that the Hellenistic world continued even after due to how much importance Greek had in the eastern roman empire.

 

[bitmapmedivh]

Gotta say, it's a little disappointing that we keep having to rehash the same arguments over and over because new people come in and post without reading even the first page of replies.

Not to mention rehashed arguments from the CK2 debates: engine limitations, "the game is called X", Long Fingers of Ming, etc.

 

[Avian Overlord]

Not to mention rehashed arguments from the CK2 debates: engine limitations, "the game is called X", Long Fingers of Ming, etc.

To be fair, many of those are valid. In CK2. Which this game very much is not.

 

[Lord Tataraus]

Guilty as charged, I suppose. I am a Romanophile, though I think the modern slang would be Romaboo. It's hard not to be when the name of the game is Imperator: Rome and that it's basically the sequel to deeply flawed EU:Rome. Also It's not about the time-frame in general, it's nonsensical to think that. The start date was chosen because of how Rome didn't expand that much before it, and the game ends somewhere during Augustus's reign. That period marks Rome's rise to preeminence the fall of the republic and rise of the empire, not the Mauryan empire, not the kushan empire, and not the Han dynasty. Then again it could be argued that the period also covers most of the diadochi wars. The game starts at a fairly early and interesting part of the wars and it ends with Augustus having won and Marc Antony and Cleopatra (The Last Diadochi ruler) having killed themselves.

I wouldn't lose any sleep if India or China weren't in the game at all. Though having India in the game really does help the Diadochi aspect of the game, and leaving India out really would hurt it. I simple must acknowledge that the Diadochi wars occurred before and during Rome's rise to preeminence. Alexander created the Hellenistic world, and Rome ended the Diadochi kingdoms, though you might argue that the Hellenistic world continued even after due to how much importance Greek had in the eastern roman empire.

The game isn't about Rome, it is about the building (and fall) of some of the largest Empires of antiquity. Rome is included in that because, obviously, it was the empire that dominated the whole of the Mediterranean. But this is also the rise of the Parthian Empire and the rise and fall of the Mauyrian and it's successor empires and the fall of the Diadochi empires. This is also the rise of the first united Empire in China. All of these line up perfectly and match the theme so we would like that the missing major empire from the time period be included in the game. The initial release will of course have more of a focus on Rome because of it's marketability and recognition with the general public as much or more than it has to do with the actual focus of the game itself. However, we can expect that future DLC will focus on different empires and regions of the era and the argument of this thread is that China deserves to eventually be included on that.

 

[doritosanddew666]

If they were going to go as far as India/Tibet, we should of just got a world map. Excluding the new world obviously.

 

[Zerodv]

If they were going to go as far as India/Tibet, we should of just got a world map. Excluding the new world obviously.

At the same time Subsaharan Africa, Siberia and Indonesia are not exactly regions needed for this time period

 

[Sirbab]

I don't think you understand what the phrase map projection means. It's still a map projection, they're just not projecting it onto a plane. Though that is very good news because it means that almost all of of us won't be able to tell where the distortions occur, and the distortions will be smaller than if they were projecting onto a plane.


Arguments are contingent on facts. We could be making similar types of arguments, but your facts can be simply wrong.
Example from earlier: I argued that China shouldn't be included because of how little it interacted with Rome, TheDarkMaster argued that Scandinavia shouldn't be included because of how little it interacted with Rome. They were both the same type of arguments, but the facts were different.

I'm afraid I'm going to disagree, map projection in practice is placing a spherical or semi spherical surface on a plane, which is generally flat and made to conform to a square or rectangular shape for convienice's sake. It was a problem in previous games because while shape was Preserved with the utilized projection, size was not, making extreme latitudes appear much larger. To use a curved plane like in imperator, and not using it to preserve both shape and size would be ridiculous given the extra work involved.

Perhaps we simply misunderstand one another, but the original post mentioned a projection that would include one part of Asia but not the rest, which has little to do with projection, but more so use of Terra incognita like Northern Scandinavia.

In general, if enough players express interest in China, then the devs probably will end up making It a dlc, if one doesn't want it, then vote with your wallet and don't buy it. I don't think there needs to be squabbling over it especially since the game isn't even out.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I'm afraid I'm going to disagree, map projection in practice is placing a spherical or semi spherical surface on a plane, which is generally flat and made to conform to a square or rectangular shape for convienice's sake. It was a problem in previous games because while shape was Preserved with the utilized projection, size was not, making extreme latitudes appear much larger. To use a curved plane like in imperator, and not using it to preserve both shape and size would be ridiculous given the extra work involved.

Perhaps we simply misunderstand one another, but the original post mentioned a projection that would include one part of Asia but not the rest, which has little to do with projection, but more so use of Terra incognita like Northern Scandinavia.

In general, if enough players express interest in China, then the devs probably will end up making It a dlc, if one doesn't want it, then vote with your wallet and don't buy it. I don't think there needs to be squabbling over it especially since the game isn't even out.

I don't mean to be rude, as map projection is a very interesting kind of thing and I'd hate to discourage enthusiasm for it, but Map projection is merely an application of generalized projections, and as such it's not at all true to say the only kind of map projection you can do is to project a spherical surface onto a plane. As evidence of that you need look no further than a globe. The earth is round, but it is not spherical, and this without taking into account all the irregular changes in elevation, The earth bulges near the equator and is flattened at the poles, and beyond that is very irregular in its shape. So every single globe you've ever seen is a map projection from the actual irregular shape of the earth onto a regular sphere. Btw even saying that the map is projected onto a plane is very misleading, because people might easily misunderstand and think that it has to be projected onto a rectangle or a spherical cylinder, when you could project onto a flattened surface of a cone, which has very different effects. With the 3D nature of the map, you have the roundish earth projected onto a differently round 3d model projected onto your computer, which are usually relatively flat, but I've seen some obviously curved ones.

Even though the 3d map will distort the earth far less than a normal 2d map, never forget that it actually still does distort it. We wouldn't want to misunderstand the nature of the thing of with which we are dealing, I hope.

also

I don't think there needs to be squabbling over it especially since the game isn't even out.

There's no need for discussion of any kind, but discussion is a thing that exists for its own sake, it doesn't need to justify itself because to justify itself would require further discussion.

 

[Creamu]

When did we start caring about alexander or india?

Perhaps youre one to complain about recent EU4 expansions with a heavy focus outside Europe as well?

 

[klopkr]

Perhaps youre one to complain about recent EU4 expansions with a heavy focus outside Europe as well?

My argument is literally the opposite. These eruopaboos can't handle anything that isn't related to their precious greeks or romans. I was pointing out how ridiculous it already is to call it a rome only game.

 

[Antiochos Soter]

Hallo,
there is a paper written by Yanxiao He, a PhD student at the University of Chicago in his third year, called 'The Land of One Thousand Cities and the Land of One Million People: Greco-Roman and Chinese Perspectives on Bactria in Antiquity' about which I learnt just yesterday and which is freely accessible via academia.edu (you have to have a free account nonetheless, I think). It covers just the same time frame as Imperator: Rome, that is from third to first century BC (Edit: actually up to first century CE). I haven't read all of it myself yet, but so far it seems well done. He not only uses Chinese and English literature, but quotes French, German, Russian and Italian publications as well. As I guess many are eager to learn more about this topic, but probably only know either the Western or the Chinese perspective on Bactria (if any), I rate this work highly interesting. Perhaps some of you do, too.

EDIT: After reading more of the paper, I have to say there are some minor flaws. Partly they're of linguistic nature (in most cases you still get the idea), then there are some claims in need of further elaboration (at least in the first part and to my mind), and sometimes he adopts rather outdated narratives about the Seleucid empire (even though he generally cites up-to-date literature).

 

[General Pepper]

As long as the performance would not be effected too much, I'll support Chinese DLC, no matter there is no interaction between China and Rome.

 

[NaiveCarto]

The situation of China kingdoms in 351BC:

The situation of Qin Empire in 221BC:

The situation of Qin Empire in 213BC:


Extremely thanks to : 锋舞若龙/河山长水 silently.

 

[Zerodv]

The situation of China kingdoms in 351BC:

The situation of Qin Empire in 221BC:

The situation of Qin Empire in 213BC:


Extremely thanks to : 锋舞若龙/河山长水 silently.

The border in 351 seems to go a bit too south AFAIK.

 

[Le Petit Corporal]

Hallo,
there is a paper written by Yanxiao He, a PhD student at the University of Chicago in his third year, called 'The Land of One Thousand Cities and the Land of One Million People: Greco-Roman and Chinese Perspectives on Bactria in Antiquity' about which I learnt just yesterday and which is freely accessible via academia.edu (you have to have a free account nonetheless, I think). It covers just the same time frame as Imperator: Rome, that is from third to first century BC. I haven't read all of it myself yet, but so far it seems very well done and written. He not only uses Chinese and English literature, but quotes French, German, Russian and Italian publications as well. As I guess many are eager to learn more about this topic, but probably only know either the Western or the Chinese perspective on Bactria (if any), I rate this work highly interesting. Perhaps some of you do, too.

Thank you so much for this. I'm going to do my thesis on the Indo-Greeks and this looks like it could be quite helpful

 

[NaiveCarto]

The border in 351 seems to go a bit too south AFAIK.

There are records to say at that time Chu had controlled this area, the question is, without these forts on the border, its control about today's Jiangxi, Hunan can get into which level.