Intra-tribal delineations

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1

It would be really interesting to see the tribe you lead to break down into different clans. IE a lot of Native American tribes have animal clans within the larger group that are sort of like an extended family. Many times the clan follows a mother (or father) but it’s the same for the whole tribe. And there might be different taboo’s than our modern cultures like only marry out side the clan.

It would be really cool if the player could nominate what you name your clan’s after (plants in general, only trees, animals, only predators, or picking each one individually even) different things around you that you use in other activities (hunting and gathering.) It could also be tied to different jobs in the tribe. The Turtle clan is good at healing and the Wolf clan is good at hunting. Preferably the player would be able to assign both the items/animals of reverence and what their meaning or benefit could be.

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If I recall, the Neolithic proto-city of Catalhoyuk was divided into two major groups. Unsure if it was for the same reason.

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This seems like a good concept. However, didnt the creators say we won’t see anyother tribes on our map?
However we will still be able to work with them? If I remember correctly… I wonder if they will work this out…

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This is specifically for within one tribe that you control. For instance you’re an Oak Clan member of the Sakelariosak Tribe. It doesn’t really have anything to do with other Tribes other than thinking “I wonder what their clans are” maybe lol.

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On a macro scale, most tribes or clans that we know of, and I mean tens of thousands of them, were practically the same, especially when taking into account their biomes. Obviously the Eskimo, Akkadians or Vistulans were different, but the differences between Vistulans, Polans, Mazovians, Goplans, Lendians and other west Slavic tribes…? Practically nothing. They lived in practically the same environment, dealt with the same resources, made the same things, talked the same language and so forth. Look upon the Grecians of old, the Boeotians, Minyans, Argives, Arcadians, Phocēans, Locrians and others… the fact that they went out together to burn Troy does suggest great similarities between them. Especially since Troy was similarly Grecian… The Iliad struggles to establish any actual difference between them other than just… happing to be living in different places. I feel therefore, that there should, most often, be very little difference between “our” tribe, and the ones close to us, or different clans or so.

Of course, @demon might be thinking more of the differences between groups of tribes or clans, “peoples” or something like that. After all, the differences between the West Slavs and the Germanic tribes next to them were such that the former called the latter something in the lines of “People who can’t speak properly”. They still do :wink: God knows they fought endlessly for the first one and a half millennia of their being neighbours, till 1945 AD… And just at the Slavs when they came to Europe, or when the Indo-Europeans came to Europe and the Middle-East, look at the Hittites, or even the Akkadian invasion of Sumer. In those cases, I would agree that there would be differences in culture, language, religion and other matters. Not very much so in technology, even though the Indo-Europeans are said to have come mounted on horses, and excelling in the use of Iron… but I’m sceptical towards two different clans in the same tribe being different from each other in abilities, unless it is more like the castes of India, with practically bred “merchants” or “craftsmen”. Especially so early as the neo-lithicum and chalcolithicum :confused:

@sakelariosak, I think the developers answered this in their interview ( HistoriaGames - Actualité - Interview avec les développeurs d'Ancient Cities ), in which they stated both that:

“There will other tribes living around in the world, but not in the city map. You will interact with them, and them will interact with you giving a nice context for the city. What happens in the surrounding world will have an impact in the city.”

And that the game map, or well, the city map, will:

"… range from 1 to several Km² but we still don’t know how big they will be in the final game because we still need to implement lots of optimizations.

It will be enough to hold a medium city with surrounding farming areas though."

It seems then that it will be like Caesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus: Master of Olympus, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Children of the Nile or Tropico II: our tribe will live in our city, or village, on our map, and every other tribe (or other clans of our tribe? Other tribes of our people) will be accessible though some regional or world map, which will probably grow as we discover more of the world. On that regional or world map, we can do everything from found colonies, trade with other cities, invade them, create alliances with them… maybe they will affect each other, migration and spreading of ideas, languages, religions…?

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Everything like @Grigor, with two points however:

  • Sometimes also there are “minor” differences that make members of the same people fell foreign. As an example: in the early bronze age, the whole of Iraq and Syria was populated by people speaking Akkadian and Amurrites, being both sedentary and nomads, so we may feel them being one lone people. However, in one of those letters it’s been quite a surprise to discover that a king of Mari and a king of Kurdâ needed a translator to speak directly, even if both of them were Amurrites. Just to see the distance between those two towns, just consider them being Dêr ez-Zôr and Sinjar, in current Syria, and you’ll see they were nearly neighbors. But those two kings, probably feeling more foreigners than we have thought, were allied when the Elamits tried to invade the Amurrites land, because they were still more aliens. Probably same stories could be found in most parts of the world (like Southern and Northern Vietnamese today seem to have real trouble to understand themselves it seems).
  • I hope @demon’s idea may be used in game – not necessarily for two neighboring tribes on the same map, but in some peculiar, simpler cases: when there are political troubles in the city (aka rebellion), when there is a risk of secession, when one part of the tribe want to migrate and not the other, when there is a part of the tribe keeping to nomadism and another part that choose sedentarism, etc.
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Hear, hear, with a tribe being divided, moving, a colony breaking loose, stratification and hierarchies and leadership crisis!

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when you suggest that I immediately think of cadet dynasties, do you mean something similar to those?

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@Grigor I am hoping we can spread disease to them as well as all those things. It would be amazing to wipe out an enemy village by spreading a contagious disease.

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Kinda but like a cross with this, they describe more of what I mean in the “Clans as political units” section.

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I am in no way shape or form talking about other tribes I think you missed my point entirely. I am 100% talking about different classes/clans/extended families/cadet branches/ or what ever you want to call differences within one tribe.

I would like to point you to the term “intra” as part of the title that means “inside” so the intra-tribal delineations would be to differentiate different peoples inside the one tribe you manage.

I hope this is sufficiently clear as mud.

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The point is that the examples I brought up illustrate how little differences actually existed between many “tribes” or “clans” of the same people (remember, both “clan” and “tribe” are very difficult to define, to the effect that different authors would call the same group “tribe” or “clan” or “people”). If they live in the same area, they speak the same language, pray to the same gods, use the same tools and intermarry… we would be hard-pressed to create any differences other than in name. I find it hard then to imagine any clan being “good at healing” or “good at hunting”. Especially since the game, as far as we know, seems to be about leading one single group, of one village or city or similar, in its dealings with nature and other groups.

I could though imagine something like the Germanic “ätter”, or the Jewish tribes, even the Roman gentes (nota bene that even though this would mean “people” in most Romance languages, it rarely did in Latin, just like “tribus” didn’t directly translate to “tribe”), meaning more the descendants of a particular great person, though often as prosaic as the builder of a particular house (more a “great house” than a simple hut, maybe one of @lotus253’s long houses perhaps?). So maybe the first leader of our tribe, our people, our village, would start a line? And then maybe the shaman’s descendants? And… some other person? “Ugga-Bugga, son of Ulashi, of the Kadzjolim”? Just like in Crusader Kings, where there are both persons of “great houses” and ordinary mortals, I would expect there to be an option to see the family tree, and see that the houses of X and Y are actually all descendants of the great Z, who is said to have been the son of the god Y, and who brought the art of fire to mankind…

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Sadly mud isn’t clear. Lmao. However, I understand your point made. Further, great point / suggestion.