Concept: Civilizations

When I think about history, I think about different sorts of civlizations. A civilization is a language, political entity, way of life, religion, or other common characterstics which spread throughout a large area. As I write the game, I'm going to heavily rely on the concept of civilizations to guide world building.

A couple of examples might be in order.

The Soviet Civilization: Based on the Old Russian Empire, the Soviet Civilization expanded by military conquest to include most of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Soviet civilization is best understood as a certain way of organizing society using bureaucracy and police. Their great achievment was quickly industrializing and maintaining centralized control over a vast, diverse area. The Soviet Civilization was fundamentally Russian, but included many, many ethnic groups. The Soviet Union is gone, but its way of life is still influential in its former territory.

American Civilization: Started when a mixed bag of Europeans showed up and conquered the best part of North America. Many of the phenomena which later dominated the world were perfected or first used here, such as electricity, quality control, republican democracy, air power, and mass education. Its culture and style of business dominate the world. The descendants of the mixed European settlers and mixed African slaves came to be known as "White Americans" and "Black Americans", although other ethnic groups were common.

Muslim Civilization: Forces from the Arabian pennisula conquered huge swaths of North Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. They eventually taught their language and culture to much of the conquered people, thus expanding the "Arab" ethnic group well beyond the Arabian pennisula itself. Although the "Community of Believers" has not been a unified political entity for 100 years or more, the Muslim religion is still practiced throughout the world, and Muslim law still practiced in much of the world.