I know it’s in early stages. But maybe two things?
First Thing: I’d love to see a true Neolithic culture, not all of it, but things like maybe people can decorate their huts or some people wear jewelry while others don’t. Things like that. And it would be awesome if we could like zoom in & see what’s going on inside the huts and watch what people are doing. And will their clothes be different during different times of year, like summer vs winter?
Second Thing: It would be awesome if we (the player) could have some say in what aspects make your people’s religion. Like what festivities go on, or do they worship the sun, the moon or some other object of nature. Maybe there could be certain days of the year that are sacred to them (and you could pick those days out maybe). I would love to see a religious festival or ceremony play out in this game.
Sorry if I sound weird or demanding too much, but I’m super excited about this game. Can’t wait to see what you guys do with it.
On the idea of religion and festivities, I’m not sure exactly how time is to be treated in the game (i.e. day/night cycles and seasons). But having solstices and equinoxes that could be of cultural or religious significance to the tribe would be a great detail.
To add to the idea of culture, it would be interesting to have random (or maybe periodical) natural phenomena, such as auroras or meteor showers influence the religion or culture is some way. And maybe depending on scientific knowledge and tech progression, the tracking of short-period comets like Halley’s Comet influencing ceremonies or festivals.
Would be nice to have players’ intervention on culture and religion. The ideal for me would be to have the players shape them up at first and then let them intervene when there’s an outside influence. As example you ancounter a religion which worships the rivers while you worship the sun only and you have to decide to add them into your religion or not.
That’s a nice idea. Maby we can take it one step further?
Like you said, clothing and decoration were important, so if we’re starting a neolithic tribe, then perhaps we should be able to design our own body paint? Designing our own clothes would probably be too much to ask, but a few different body-paint patterns to identify different professions?
\o/ I love it!
It would really add to the feel to allow modification of the “standard” design the tribe used.
Neolithic pottery shows us that general cultures had preferences for specific designs (e.g. LBK culture).
If they allow modding, we could change clothing texture files to “make” new clothing ourselves. (hopes!)
I think having a large variety in people, buildings, culture etc would add a lot to the game. If anyone has played banished, the game can get repetitive as without mods, its literally the same architectures over and over again.
I hope we’ll be able to craft traditional paints and dyes. It could require lots of effort and a flourishing culture to accomplish, if a player wants to paint all their mud huts ruddy. I’m curious to hear how decorations would work with decay system that’s been discussed.
Luckily, actual neolithic painting was not so tough.
Black - Simple wood ash
Grey - bone ash, clay
Red - Some berries, fixed with salt, mercury bearing minerals, and Madder, fixed with urine.
Yellow/Orange/Brown - Orchre/Clay
Green - Green plants (not all provide green dye) fixed with urine.
Blue-ish - Berries, fixed with salt as a dye. Easy to find and use.
I have found that plant dyes do not hold up in the sun well and fade fast. I wove a square panel of linen from some flax yarn I spun and dyed it with black berries from my back yard, fixed with salt. After a week in the Sun, it was nearly back to the original color.
Many of these plant dyes do make great body paints, though. I’ve found that a good, rich berry dye can stain the skin for a day and twice burned wood char can hold up for two days. Mixing with walnut oil, interestingly, reduced the length the paint remained (unexpected!).
Here’s a little demo I made showing how easily a neolithic person could add paint to themselves or things.
Supposition: Neolithic tribes may have painted themselves each day, much like nearly all documented tribal societies. This appears to be a very human thing to do.
In Thuringia until the late Middle Ages a vegetable dye was called “Waid”, the plant probably originates from West Asia. Known later as “German Indigo”
Perhaps there were wild varieties already in the Neolithic?
Woad (wie es auf English genannt wird) was common long before the Middle Ages, as the wiki article you linked points out, the Britons used it prior to battle as early as Ceasars invasion of Britain. Now this is several millennia after the end of the Neolithic, and I don’t know of evidence for the use of Woad going back that far, but it certainly would be possible.
