I like the currents and biomes setup. Feels like it's coming together. Below is another jump ahead, but it was something I was thinking about while at work.
Lengthy post ahead, looking forward to some discussion around it!
I was looking back at Ovi’s breakdown of Eras and Ages and I liked the organization, but then I got to thinking. I’m not sure if this is the same for everyone else, but when I look at periods of time, like the Medieval Era or the Age of Gunpowder, it defines a pretty specific ‘Euro-centric’ model of history for that time. Most of the history I’ve read is based on the ‘Euro-centric’ view point so I’ll admit that’s what I’m most familiar with, but I don’t believe a culture like China defines their past with similar terms. Given their more isolationist view on the world, the Age of Sail doesn’t seem an appropriate descriptor for their section of history, except for maybe Zheng He and the Chinese treasure ships which lasted for all of a century at most. Again, I’m not well versed in Chinese history and they may very well have a period labeled similar to the Age of Sail. My point is that using some of these labels could pigeon hole our ideas into specific time periods that might limit our creativity. This might make the world more Earth-like than we intended.
My suggestion is somewhat based on Ian Morris’ Why the West Rules – For Now which has some similarities with Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Both are pretty decent reads for a project like this. One of the underlying principles was a series of high points for civilization and then subsequent crashes (not necessarily low points). Once we’re out of the Prehistoric Era (I think that timeline still makes a lot of sense since it’s pretty generic despite its reference to technology) I suggest we label time periods as either ages of Convergence or Divergence. The idea here is that this designates a time period as a rough guideline for the conglomeration of peoples under larger governments (empires, federations, etc.), or the breakup of these empires into smaller polities (city-states, kingdoms). You could think of it like bubbles that continue to merge before finally popping and restarting the process. This way, we can come up with our own ‘Age’ names based on the history we’ve created. Maybe we have a massive singular empire that discovers the new world or city-states that undergo the industrial revolution.
These time periods can even be specific to certain geographical areas once the initial culture groups are placed and it becomes clear which cultures are in contact with each other. While one area is converging into larger nations, another area could be fragmenting into kingdoms.
I think there’s a good premise for this based on Earth’s history. In a grand generalization, there is the creation of the Roman Empire and the eventual breakup into European kingdoms. These started to solidify back into nations over time until the world wars which followed another period of fragmentation, etc. That’s a very basic overview that skips a lot of history, but I hope it gets my idea across. The lengths of convergence or divergence can be varied based on our tastes. This can allow us to stretch out the game as long as we like since we could slow down human advancement with more divergent setbacks like Pat’s suggestion about natural disasters, disease, angry beavers, etc.
