- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So I've been thinking about this sentence and I want to put into thoughts something that has occurred to me.
Paths of Civilisation was the first civ quest on SV or at least the first civ quest of this time. The Ymaryn were the first civ shaped by the voterbase of SV. In many ways, they are similar to the Arthwyd and the Arthwyd have slowly become more and more like the Ymaryn. Both build tall and both can't really afford to lose wars, resulting a strong, but brittle civ. Both lean toward egalitarianism and tolerance through the Ymaryn would mostly lose the former and the Arthwyd favour egalitarianism more than tolerance while the Ymaryn favoured tolerance over egalitarianism. Both are against slavery and are technologically advanced (or at least relatively so for the time period). When it comes to warfare, both the Arthwyd and the Ymaryn like to turtle up and scare off potential attackers or smash them aside with superior defences, but if they are successfully attack, they will viciously strike back against those that have wronged them. They also have centralised leadership that favours those in charge organising things over local leadership doing whatever. They both have a sense of elitism where they see themselves as the 'civilised' people and look down upon other civs for their barbaric ways. Both civs like to stay of the affairs of their neighbours and stay semi-isolated.
There are some differences such as the Arthwyd live in a more fantastical setting and are more religious whilst having lacking the empathise on farming and accepting others that the Ymaryn had. However, the Ymaryn and Arthwyd are quite similar in the general direction that the players have pushed both civ and the general play-style behind each civ.
The other civ quests that sprung up in the wake of PoC's success aren't like this. A good number of these civ quests died early on before the player civ could gain a distinct and unique identity, but of the others, they were always different to the Ymaryn. Oh, they kept the same basic strategy of building tall, having centralised leadership and generally being prepared for long term survival of the civ without collapsing or fragmenting, but the details of the culture were always very difference. Yucatan had big emphasis on boats and fishing to the PoC's emphasis on farming and favoured diplomacy and spiritualism to PoC's semi-isolation and pro-science stance. From Stone to the Stars had a focus on hunting and spiritualism and regularly got involved in wars. Indus was one of the more radically different ones as the players went full-on violence and martial conquest, eschewing the generally nice guy approach that many other civ quests had.
It was when I read this post in Tales of the People that I realised what the reasons for the above were.
Here we have a player wanting to do something in a civ quest because it is different to another civ quest and they want to try something new. With Yucatan, Indus and Stone to the Stars and the other civ quests that started after PoC, the players wanted to do things differently to PoC and try new things in these other civ quests, resulting in the player civs of these other civ quests being distinctly different to the Ymaryn. Now why isn't that the case with the Arthwyd and this civ quest? Well, remember when I mentioned this in the opening post of the thread?
The other civ quests had started while either PoC or its successor, Paths of Industrialisation, were ongoing and the memories of PoC and the Ymaryn were something that the majority of the voterbase had. They remembered their experiences in PoC and wanted something difference.
And while some of the people partaking in this quest remember PoC, many of the prominent posters in this thread don't and have to have old references and in-jokes explained to them. Looking at the dates, I started this quest close to ten months after PoC ended and now it is close to a year since PoC ended. There was also a bit of a gap between me starting this quest and last major civ quest dying since it was that lack of a major civ quest that inspired me to start this quest.
As a result, we got the SV playerbase pushing a civ down a path that naturally suits the general overall tendencies of the playerbase as we did with PoC, resulting in the player civs of both quests having a fair number of similarities. And while there is plenty of old hands in the voterbase of this quest, we also got good amount of new blood and combining that with faded memories of PoC and the civ quests it inspired, there is no push to do something different to PoC, leaving SV to its natural tendencies when it comes to shaping the Arthwyd, something they did with the Ymaryn and the end resulting being that the Ymaryn and the Arthwyd have a good number of similarities.
Edit: I am okay with this outcome. I like to see the players making that choices on what they think is best for this quest rather than picking the option they didn't do in another quest. I am happy to have the Arthwyd be Ymaryn Redux: Low Fantasy Edition.
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