punkass wrote:

Yes it's a bit of work to include all the different cultures names for each city, but it should be a small text file, and I'm pretty sure you could get an intern to do it...

That's actually something I could do quite easily for free if devs told me it'd be implemented as a game option. By the way - it's already there. They have city names for each culture (I think) because when you switch to another culture then your new cities will have names from that new culture. It's just a matter of adding an option to make AI switch all city names to new ones (it'd be optional so that only those who want it would enable it). One small option which would probably please many players.

Limstella wrote:

I really don't see whats immersion breaking about this in the game where you can go from Babylon to the Aztecs in a playthough. It feels like its supposed to be that way, yes your AI opponents will have weird city combinations but that seems the point. Their old city names are a reminder as much as anything of the cultures they used to be. Ultimately this seems like an overly complex thing to figure out all the culture city name changes according to accurate language patterns.

a lot of placenames change slightly but are indicitive of histories that are fairly interesting. There are cities in England with Celtic names in origin for a reason.

And yet they are not the same as 2000+ years ago which actually proves my point.

It's immersion breaking for some of those who are interested in more historic approach to the game. When I look at the map of ancient world I see Greek city states with Athens, Sparta, Corinthos, Thebai, Delphi etc as cities, not Tenochtitlan, Memphis and Beijing. When I look at map of medieval Europe I see France with Paris and England with London, not French with Moscow and English with Rome as capital cities. If we change cultures, that is we even start calling ourselves differently ("we're not Nubians anymore, we consider ourselves Greeks now") - then why we should stick to Nubian city names?

I would like to see a script where city names can become a wide variety of new names by themselves through a city name generator that aggregates different possible names according to which cities you pick up.  If you're the ancient chinese and you pick up a greek city, you should have a 5%-25% chance of new cities founded in that quarter of your empire having some Sino-Greco/Sino-Grec new city title that perhaps didn't exist in our timeline.

Am I wrong or isn't this closest to how things actually go, in reality?

If England won the hundred years war, they'd have moved their capital to Paris because england had a population of 3 million to the French 17 million.  So in that game, in that version of our timeline, you'd expect half of all new, "English," cities that are founded in the, "new," worlds to thus be about 45-65% French-English/Hybrids, with the rest being some hybrid of other cities that you've conquered.

If Joan of Arc had conquered London, then only 15% max of your new cities are going to likely involve Angloification; even this, would likely require your Joan-led French empire to conquer every square inch of England to really be that affected by such a less populated culture which was already so ... previously influenced by French

AquilaSPQR wrote:

And yet they are not the same as 2000+ years ago which actually proves my point.

It's immersion breaking for some of those who are interested in more historic approach to the game. When I look at the map of ancient world I see Greek city states with Athens, Sparta, Corinthos, Thebai, Delphi etc as cities, not Tenochtitlan, Memphis and Beijing. When I look at map of medieval Europe I see France with Paris and England with London, not French with Moscow and English with Rome as capital cities. If we change cultures, that is we even start calling ourselves differently ("we're not Nubians anymore, we consider ourselves Greeks now") - then why we should stick to Nubian city names?

It doesn't quite prove the point you're making at all. Yes, somewhat the names have morphed but they're still reflective of cultural roots and bygone inhabitants in the way encountering the Ming with Babylon in the center of the empire is going to be reflective of that ingame Empire's history. If you're arguing with me by pointing to a map of Europe and asking me where Kerma is, and telling me it being in the heart of the English empire in a game of Humankind is immersion breaking I don't think I can agree with your perspective on how this game should play out because I think we have a fundamentally different view on the point of this game. It almost makes me want to be contrarian and insist it stays this way. 

That said, I agree with anyone in general that ensuring more recent cultures get reflected in names as the game goes on is a reasonable expectation and something I'd like to see. I think the way the mechanics are are more of a problem of 4X in general, where the original settlements sprawl and you never really see later game settlements ever see much prominence. I'm not sure how to solve that on the grand scale of mechanics, such as enforcing decline in a way that isn't "feel bad", but I think the ability and incentive to be able to shift/deattach/reattach territories from their given blob would help, and am currenlty unaware of if that is or will be an option. Seeing Athens, Rome or London emerge from the former hinterlands of Kerma because you've turned former outposts that were once under it into their own city would be, to me at least, more immersive to the flow of the game than Kerma randomly becoming London. Moving capitals would also be more inducive to fixing the percieved issue with empires you encountering having repetitive names. There's a lot of layers of different settlements and naming conventions in real history that follow this, especially with the moving of major city centers and such away from abandoned ones.

I prefer all of that *over* randomizing name changes, though I also am not strictly against the latter if its reasonably implemented such as a balance like Alice99 describes. 

Again the point you were making is that culture city names should just flip to ones you think are reflective of the new culture because you think that's more "historical". The fact that there are roots of place names in England that have a Celtic/Brythonic origin does not support your point here, it means that the English kept calling things by Celtic/Brythonic or even Roman names as the dominant language shifted through a bit to Old English. That actively discredits your idea of city names just abandoning their roots and flipping to something random being more historical. As pointed out, the thing thats more historical, some system where these switches follow a logical path is way to complex to implement evenly. As is, city names from old cultures sticking around is an abstraction that at least conveys conceptually the point of place names having old precurrent culture roots within the game. If I sail over to a continent and discover the Dutch, I'm going to be pleasently surprised if I discover place names and quarters alike that reveal their history not just of their chosen culture but perhaps the IPs they conquered during their Mongol phase! You on the other hand seem bothered by this concept which is quite confusing given that its the point of the game, and your request is to make the game play less like its intended.

The point of the game isn't that you're playing against the literal Russians, you're playing against the Russo-Nordic-Nubians. If this is immersion breaking I'm not sure you're looking at the right game for yourself. 

Limstella wrote:
Again the point you were making is that culture city names should just flip to ones you think are reflective of the new culture because you think that's more "historical". The fact that there are roots of place names in England that have a Celtic/Brythonic origin does not support your point here, it means that the English kept calling things by Celtic/Brythonic or even Roman names as the dominant language shifted through a bit to Old English.

Again - it does. Even the Londinium > London change is still a change. Let's take some other large English cities: Birmingham (no Celtic or even Latin background), Leeds (Loidis - significant change), Sheffield (no Celtic or Latin background), Bradford (same here), Manchester (Mancunio + castra - a significant change), Liverpool (again no celtic or latin roots), Bristol (from Old English Brycgstow - not only lack latin or Celtic roots but even Old English one is quite distant from modern version) and so on, and so on... You may say "some of them didn't exist in the Celtic/Latin era, so it doesn't count". Yet these are some of the major English cities now, literally screaming "I'M ENGLISH". If you look at map of the world that's where England is, not in Argentina. 

Also if you say there are settlements (some major preferably) which did not change their names since Celtic era - then I'd say the burden of proof is on you. I posted examples of major English cities with no Celtic roots and those with Latin roots which changed. 

It's still not as drastic as Beijing > London, but since the game allows such change, it's still warranted. We have the Tenochtitlan > La Ciudad de Mexico example. 

Even if you consider such "drastic" changes too drastic - it's still better than not changing anything at all.

Probably the best way to have it done in Humankind would be making variations of basic names - how for example Kerma would look like if taken by Romans ("Kermium" for example), but that would be too time consuming to make for all cultures so let's forget about it (and still it would look strange to have "Kermium" as Roman capital instead of eternal Roma). 

Limstella wrote:
If I sail over to a continent and discover the Dutch, I'm going to be pleasently surprised if I discover place names and quarters alike that reveal their history not just of their chosen culture but perhaps the IPs they conquered during their Mongol phase!

And you still will. Maybe they were Mongolians centuries ago, but they're Dutch now, so it's logical they speak Dutch now and call their cities accordingly. Culture changed, new language reigns, BUT  there are still old unique extensions there. And that's much more cool - tey are Dutch, they are not Mongolians anymore, YET there are remnants of their past not in the names of Mongolian (yeah, I wish... rather Nubian or Egyptian...) cities but in their material culture which is far more resillient than language (people in England do not speak Latin anymore yet there is plenty of Roman coins there still lingering in the soil). That's much better than finding Nubian or Egyptian cities with guys pretending to be Dutch. And even could be more thrilling - "what is their heritage? What path did they take? Oh, are those Nubian pyramids? So they were Nubians thousand years ago!" 

Limstella wrote:
You on the other hand seem bothered by this concept which is quite confusing given that its the point of the game, and your request is to make the game play less like its intended.

I wouldn't say it's "less like it's intended". I still like the ability to choose and adopt new cultures and mix old with the new. Evolving and changing. But in a more logical way. The option to change names is more or less cosmetic. It doesn't nullify the concepts of this game, it  merely makes it more visually acceptable for those who prefer more historic approach (because displaying city name as Kerma or Rome or Moscow is just like that - cosmetical, it doesn't impact gameplay that much). 

Limstella wrote:
The point of the game isn't that you're playing against the literal Russians, you're playing against the Russo-Nordic-Nubians.

Just like it is in the real world. Slavic tribes mixed with non Slavic tribes, Scandinavians, Mongols, Europeans and plenty of regional people (Bashkirs, Evenks and many others I can't even name because there's so many of them etc). And yet it's still Russia with Moscow as capital and St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Smolensk, Vladivostok etc. If that's how it looks like in real world, then why in the game it should not be possible under any circumstances? Russia evolved just like in the game. Same with many other countries. And yet, despite this heritage, their city names are what they are.

That's why I propose this (optional) change. You still can mix cultures. You still can create whatever culture you can. You still can have Egyptian/Roman/French/Japanese/Russian heritage. It still will be visible on the map thanks to your old extensions. But if you are Russians NOW - it would be stressed by new city names. 

Take a look at Greece. It has roots in antiquity and managed to preserve their culture (it evolved a bit, but is still based on ancient Greece a lot). They have Parthenon and other monuments - proof of their Greek heritage. And their city names are... Greek.

Now let's take a look at Spain. There's Roman city called Emerita Augusta. But culture changed and city is not Roman anymore. It's Spanish, that's why it's not Emerita Augusta anymore, but Merida. And YET there are still Roman monuments there, reminding everyone of its Roman heritage. The city is a Roman/Spanish mix with both Roman and Spanish monuments (exactly like cities in Humankind) and yet its name changed. So why it's suppousedly so strange to see something like that in the game?

Limstella wrote:
If this is immersion breaking I'm not sure you're looking at the right game for yourself. 

Or maybe I am? The future will tell (if devs won't pick up this idea for a mere additional option then there's still chance modders will or maybe it'd not be that hard to change myself tinkering with the game files).