Song Dynasty

[siafu]

Yeah, but making flag/shield sets is a lot of work from those designs. I already have one for Wu, one kaigon made.

http://medlem.spray.se/kaigon/ in the Rise of Christianity section.

That particular Wu is another name for the province of Jiangsu, which in Interregnum is part of Ming. The "Shu" that's right next to it would be slightly more appropriate as its just another name for Sichuan, which is controlled in Int. by Nanzhao. Since it was Nanzhao that supported him in the revolt, that would work better.

Though I'm still pulling for Hui.

BTW, that flag that's on that page for Wei is the same character as the one I sent you; can we use that?

Also BTW, we may get some complaints if we use Wei AND Shu because these are two of the names of the successor states in the Three Kingdoms Period (ca. AD 200) which many people know of from playing ROTK (Wu, or Dong Wu, was the third one, created by Sun Quan). I don't have a problem with it myself, of course.

EDIT: Also "Dai Shun" in the AGCEEP set on that page would be appropriate; the character on the shield is just shun4 (順) which was being used for Song (or Wei as it was called; the Southern Chinese state) way back when.

 

[MattyG]

That particular Wu is another name for the province of Jiangsu, which in Interregnum is part of Ming. The "Shu" that's right next to it would be slightly more appropriate as its just another name for Sichuan, which is controlled in Int. by Nanzhao. Since it was Nanzhao that supported him in the revolt, that would work better.

You certainly know your stuff. Are you fluent with Chinese characters?

Though I'm still pulling for Hui.

Careful, as has been established, that's also Russian for dick.

BTW, that flag that's on that page for Wei is the same character as the one I sent you; can we use that?

Yep, already done.

Also BTW, we may get some complaints if we use Wei AND Shu because these are two of the names of the successor states in the Three Kingdoms Period (ca. AD 200) which many people know of from playing ROTK (Wu, or Dong Wu, was the third one, created by Sun Quan). I don't have a problem with it myself, of course.

We will crush those who oppose it.

EDIT: Also "Dai Shun" in the AGCEEP set on that page would be appropriate; the character on the shield is just shun4 (順) which was being used for Song (or Wei as it was called; the Southern Chinese state) way back when.

Appropriate for whom?

 

[siafu]

Appropriate for whom?

Appropriate for Lau Keung.

Are you fluent with Chinese characters?

I used to be near fluent in Mandarin, years ago. Reading and writing in Chinese is always a challenge, though, but I did learn one very important but surprisingly difficult skill: how to use a Chinese dictionary.

 

[MattyG]

What does it look like? Is it structured in a similar way to other dictionaries, in that the symbols (our letters) are ranked by an order (the alphabet A-Z) to facilitate the sequentializing of the words/symbols?

Did you want his dynasty to also be called Dai Shun, or do we stick with Wu?

 

[Don_Quigleone]

judging by the fact chinese doesn't (or didn't, does it now?) use an alphabet it must be difficult to use a dictionary

 

[siafu]

Did you want his dynasty to also be called Dai Shun, or do we stick with Wu?

No no, call it "Shun" but use the flag for Dai Shun from Kaigon's site.

What does it look like? Is it structured in a similar way to other dictionaries, in that the symbols (our letters) are ranked by an order (the alphabet A-Z) to facilitate the sequentializing of the words/symbols?

judging by the fact chinese doesn't (or didn't, does it now?) use an alphabet it must be difficult to use a dictionary

Each character in Chinese has what's called a "radical" which is a simpler character built into it; many simple characters (like 火, 木, 女, 人. and 子 e.g.) and have no radicals because they are radicals in other characters themselves. To look up a character, you look up its radical and then look through a list based on the number of other strokes it contains; this gives you a page number to turn to. So, for example, 魏, wei4, is composed of a radical, 鬼, gui3, plus an additional 8 strokes. Many characters though, can be "composed" in multiple ways. In one of my dictionaries, for example, wei4 is also sorted by 禾, he2, plus 13 strokes. This is because most characters evolved before Chinese scholars started thinking of them as being radicals and strokes.

Modern dictionaries themselves are arranged using pinyin spellings and the order of the latin alphabet; this way you can look up a word just based on the sound if you don't know how it's written.

 

[MattyG]

And why do you imagine they are called 'radicals' in English. It seems an odd choice of word to describe them, given the existing uses of that word.

 

[siafu]

And why do you imagine they are called 'radicals' in English. It seems an odd choice of word to describe them, given the existing uses of that word.

I had no idea, but according to wikipedia it was already a linguistics term referring to the "root word" in a European language, and it was borrowed by European scholars of Chinese to apply to Chinese radicals. I know that the word in Chinese is bu4shou3 (部首) which when dissected literally means something like "main part" or "front part".

 

[siafu]

So, whatever happens with Song up to 1500ish, once the various event cycles have gotten through the difficult first century with some measure of success (i.e., Song still exists and hasn't been completely clobbered) there should be an event like this:

Event: "The Era of Xinde"
"With the century of upheaval coming to an end, the Emperor declared a new era, the Era of Xinde or "New Glory". The Song state was ready for a new challenge. The officials at court suggested three different policies. Some argued for a campaign of conquest to reunify the Middle Kingdom; some advocated that Song look overseas for fortune and power in the manner of the Wei court; finally, others, remembering all to well the generations of civil war and unrest, counselled the Son of Heaven to look within and seek a policy of internal development and stability. Whose policy should we favor?"

A. Tianxia must be brought together again under the Song!
Get cores on any other Chinese (Han, Cantonese) provinces conquered thus far
Gain core on Ming capital.
+1 Land
+1 Centralization
+1 Stability
Also gain a largish army, ~40% cavalry and 60% infantry, of an appropriate size (10K cav, 12K inf? Too big?)
-100D

B. We must look to new lands; the Middle Kingdom is no more.
-1 Land
-1 Stab
-200 D
gain some warships (~3-5), trigger an event that gives an explorer & conquistador (to be fleshed out later)

C. Pursue peace and prosperity.
+3 Stab
+1 Narrowminded
-1 RR everywhere

 

[MattyG]

MattyG sez:

2. Gone, replaced with Hui dynasty. MattyG, you didn't answer my question before about any possibility of playing as the Order of the Crescent or any nation that arises out of rebellion? Is it feasible? In this case, I think if Nanzhao, a Muslim Bai state to the west, currently Lu Chuan, were to conquer enough of Song (or all of Song) it could declare itself the Hui dynasty also. Alternately, a successful rebellion could cause the government to fall and the player can "choose" to become Hui or else release Hui as an independent (non-vassal) state, or the Song player could choose to embrace Islam. As many of the above as are feasible, I endorse. Otherwise, event detail for Hui is going to the back of the list. I think in general they'd be rather belligerent and close with Champa.


I guess four possibilities may be too many, but one (#2) currently represents the utter failure of the state, so we only need to start with three. How does this look, oh Ye Who Will Be Coding?

I missed a few of these posts. Too many posts came afterwards.

These were all clasy ideas.

As far as playing a revolter is concern, it is difficult. You need to be able to adjust the savegame file. Very early on in the .eug file you will see a line titled SELECTABLE and then in brackets the tags for all the nations that are playable. So, once you release that special country, save, open, add the appropriate tag.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

"Radical" has other meanings, in chemistry a "free radical" is a molecule with one free electron, it seems to be a common enough word (though this is rather off topic...)

 

[MattyG]

"Radical" has other meanings, in chemistry a "free radical" is a molecule with one free electron, it seems to be a common enough word (though this is rather off topic...)

But here the elements (no pun) he refers to are the core pat of the word/symbol, not it's side or of fries. Radical always suggests to me something outside of the expected, not part of the norm or central locus of power and authority. Whereas, it seems that the radicals here are the central building blocks of each character.

 

[siafu]

But here the elements (no pun) he refers to are the core pat of the word/symbol, not it's side or of fries. Radical always suggests to me something outside of the expected, not part of the norm or central locus of power and authority. Whereas, it seems that the radicals here are the central building blocks of each character.

Again, according to wikipedia, the latin root is "radix" which literally means "root". Either way, the radical often gives an indication of either a character's meaning or its pronunciation. For the example of wei4 that I used above, "gui" actually has a similar vowel sound, so the radical is a phonetic component (the other two parts are he2 and nuu3 which sound nothing like "wei"). So, they are kind of like the root of the character.

 

[MattyG]

Again, according to wikipedia, the latin root is "radix" which literally means "root". Either way, the radical often gives an indication of either a character's meaning or its pronunciation. For the example of wei4 that I used above, "gui" actually has a similar vowel sound, so the radical is a phonetic component (the other two parts are he2 and nuu3 which sound nothing like "wei"). So, they are kind of like the root of the character.

OK, that's pretty neat. Thanks.