A way to work around the lack of culture slots?

[Bucefalo]

Thanks, good to know that every slot is used. Then I think it was in vanilla RTW where there were only a few cultures used. Anyway, knowing this, maybe if the EB team sometime needs to include a new culture, it could be done by merging the western and eastern greeks, as they are not so radically different, aren´t they?

[fougere]

Why are Est Greek and West Greek not one cullture: they are both a hellenistic culture?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Not really. In fact, West Greek would be closer to Roman than to East Greek: you are overlooking the influence of Egyptian culture on the Ptolemaic empire, and the influence of Achaemenid court & culture on the Seleukid one. Also note that whereas "West Greek" is reasonably well defined as the culture of small local entities called polis (or tribe depending on where you go) with a strong emphasis on agricultural production; there is no such summary possible for East Greek.

And there is the matter of scale. The Seleukid empire in 272 BC stretches "from Samarkand to Sardis": even today with our modern methods to indoctrination there exists no country that big which maintains a single culture everyone from one part to another can identify with. And East Greek is a broad term that applies not just to the Seleukid Empire here. It is also used for the Ptolemaic one, as well as the Baktrian one should it develop.

Also there are the more pronounced cultural exchanges. The Ptolemaic dynasty cultivated a mixture of Greek & Egyptian symbols connected with the pantheon which in turn was linked to the royal house. The Seleucid Empire inherited the legacy of the Achaemenid one: it was definitely not thrown away. In fact, the Seleukid Empire continues the longstanding traditions set down by Sargon I: one of the royal titles was "King of Sumer and Akkad"... Imagine a Koinon Archont going to Babylon and being greeted as the King of Sumer and Akkad? Cuneiform was one of the scripts which was kept for official edicts, there are Babylonian records of Antiochos II in a style that predates him by more than 1000 years. Look at art from the period found in Gandahara... Hellenistic style clothing (the way in which folds and strokes are depicted) with Baktrian hair fashions and Indian style body. That is the kind of cultural osmosis we talk about (although admittedly Gandaharan art is one of the highlights of this process).

[fougere]

thanks you for this precision

even today with our modern methods to indoctrination there exists no country that big which maintains a single culture everyone from one part to another can identify with.

[Bucefalo]

Thanks, very well put response.

[Tellos Athenaios]

thanks you for this precision

In what way?

As I see it: Modern history is full of forceful attempts at indoctrinating people to "love/support/admire/achieve" a certain common goal, past or identity; largely because for the first time in history such large scale propaganda has been feasible: and yet dissenting opinions were & are common enough.

The considering that what you think on social & ethical issues is largely what you are taught to think (prejudice, anyone? also just count the number of "thinkers" against the number of people?) and that indoctrination is nothing more or less than teaching a set of views & priorities (teaching prejudice??)...

Culture is more than for example just a language. But to speak that language is not necessarily a requirement for identifying with a culture. The key is not whether one single culture exists; the key is whether all people think sufficiently the same so they will answer the same as the cross-section of their individual cultures would and that this cross-section could be consider the same as the "one single culture". This includes decisions on ethical beliefs w.r.t. life & death, nature, marriage, age of consent... Given that a culture may hold untold numbers of sub-cultures, I do not doubt that there is no country the size of, say, the Ptolemaic Empire in 272 B.C. for which you can say there exists not just one "super" culture but also one each and every inhabitant can identify with. It has already proved impossible in the Netherlands [asserting the Netherlands != Holland != Amsterdam], and the UK [let no Scotsman be called English], and France [similar vigorous regional sentiments and a certain dislike for the hauteur of Paris], and Italy [there exists the Liga, what more can one say?]. Try a notch bigger, then: China? Do you think the reindeer people in Manchuria identify with the city of Shanghai? Or closer to EB home: that the people living in Tibet or Kashgar will all identify with Peking?

Oh, false example of mine... Hmm, the USA then? People living in The Valley and those living in the towns surrounding the old & abandoned coal mines in Tennessee? People sunbathing on the shores close to Miami and the people fishing just south of the Bering Straits?

This is getting OT though.

[Subotan]

People living in The Valley

My immediate reaction.