CCC Land Grab

[Simpson]

Could I get I-2
My species will be the Cynocephali

[Matrix]

Better hurry with that culture, the deadline is today!

[CatDoom]

Could I get I-2
My species will be the Cynocephali

Nice, somebody else wants a go at my species! I have to wonder if these Cynocephali are distant cultural cousins of the Ngoor; in order to get to Lyranis it seems like they must have spent quite some time island-hopping across the northern sea. Then again, perhaps some of those little northern islands were larger and connected to each other in the past, making the journey somewhat easier.

This all assumes, of course, that my hypothesis regarding their origins on the northwestern continent can be taken as true.

[Hydroeccentricity]

Better hurry with that culture, the deadline is today!

The deadline is 7~8pm Sunday when Zompist remembers this exists.

[zompist]

Don't be snarky.

Cultures should be in today for voting. You can create cultures later, but they'll arise after Year 2500.

[clawgrip]

I'm drawing a blank on my amphibimorph culture so I might just make it a later culture.

[Salmoneus]

V9 please.

[zompist]

Latest map, with culture names.

[CatDoom]

So, did we ever actually decide on how to handle the expansion/collapse of cultures based on the results of this round's voting?

[zompist]

CULTURE WINNERS LAND GRAB!

Based on the votes, people who have submitted a culture can grab additional squares:

Lulweon, Dragolm - 7 squares
Cesɔn, Ccuxu, En Soki - 5 squares
Ngoor, Mecongai - 3 squares
Ggazzei, Kyahida, Ďomün, Nespek, Torcs, Tsargoki, Apʰɯron, Zalar, Č'irah - 2 squares
Dek'ame, Zörachok, Nggwoó, Gaak, Guop, Hašahkī, T'ukwu - 1 square

Amusingly, the Lulweon and Dragolms are on the same continent. So Sal and ol bofosh should work out a border. (Or go over the oceans to start their empire.)

If you claim a spot no one else does, you've got it.

If there are multiple claims (which is likely if you're near someone else), provide an alternative, or negotiate.

If you claim a spot from an existing culture... ah, here's where it gets interesting. The idea is that the creators work together to figure out what happens. The 'conqueree' could become a province of the empire, or a faction, or go into exile, or whatever.

If you claim a spot from someone who's reserved a square but hasn't created a culture... well, if possible, let's not do that right now. Assume they're low-density primitives not yet worth conquering.

If you want to start a culture on a new square, please wait till we know where the empires live.

To start out, the Torcs would like W1r and W-1.

[ol bofosh]

Here are my requests for my cultures.

Gaak
Q-1r

Guop
B-4

Dragolm
W10r, W9, W9r, X9, X9r, W8r, X8

That should leave Sal and Mornche some room to expand. If not, I'm sure we can work something out.

[CatDoom]

Hmm... this is tricky; a lot of the squares next to the Ngoor are mostly empty ocean. Would it be permissible for me to posit the existence of minor island groups too small to appear on the map?

Anyway, for now, at least, I'm gonna go ahead and claim D7r, giving the Ngoor at least one bigish island and a tiny sliver of the mainland, as well as D8, since they already occupy the southern parts of the major islands there. Then I'll take C6r, assuming diagonals are ok.

[Mornche Geddick]

I move to claim V6R and V7R for the Čirah and W6 and U4 for the Apʰɯron. (U4R if W6 is claimed).

[KathTheDragon]

Naturally, I'll have N-10 and N-10r. That should ease the population pressure for the next thousand years.

[zompist]

You don't have to choose adjacent squares. Heck, even distance doesn't matter much if you provide a good story. (Think of the Austronesian conquest of Madagascar, done at a quite low tech level.)

[KathTheDragon]

Ah, but if the Zalar spread too far, how'd they make pilgrimages to their homeland?

[CatDoom]

Cool cool; I think I'm gonna stick by my choices and just assume that there are probably some more little (mostly inconsequential) islands scattered about those squares. After all, you have to zoom in pretty far on Google Maps to see Micronesia, and this map is on a larger scale than that.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

T'ukwu: N12r
Nggwoó: I3

I'm assuming that, at least for now, everyone's still working with the cultures that they created originally?

[Matrix]

Mecongai: H-4, H-4r, H-5r

Tsargoki: E-7r, E-8

[clawgrip]

Matrix, can Golems breathe/survive underwater for extended periods of time? I'm not sure I want to create an underwater civilization for golems, but I think I need to come up with some way of getting them off the polar continent. If they can survive underwater for at least a few days or something might work. Let me know!

[Matrix]

Golems don't need to breathe. Their main limitations in the water are erosion and pressure, but then, erosion is pretty much always a problem for them (solved by eating), and pressure isn't going to do much if you don't go too deep.

[CatDoom]

Getting lost might actually be the biggest problem. There's barely any light once you get down below about 600 feet, and none at all below 3300, so assuming golems' eyes function roughly similarly to biological ones, they'd be blind if they tried to cross the ocean floor. It doesn't help that the sea floor is mostly featureless once you get past the continental shelf; even if you had some sort of advanced light source, it would be worse than trying to walk across the Sahara with no clear destination in mind.

[clawgrip]

My thought was that some of them could ride some sea ice south during the spring and end up close enough to land that they could jump off and walk over within a couple days. I don't believe they could simply walk all the way from the polar continent to another one--it's just too far for that.

I'm also really wondering how I can expand the En Soki without entering Qiqqit's square. That's prime expansion territory.

Also, when I first created the Domun it was fairly early on and I didn't realize I had to stick to one square, so actually I ended up taking segments of about four squares. Because of this, I'm going to just formalize that by officially taking P6 and Pr5 for them.

[finlay]

OK so I would like the kingdom of Nespek to expand west to V4, while many of the disgruntled ex-slaves who started the civil war fuck off over the sea to make a new settlement at C7, where the weather is more temperate and there are no golems.

Meanwhile the dragons also look seawards and eventually make a settlement on D6r, where the fish are a bit tastier.

[Hydroeccentricity]

Ggazzei: Currently occupying both F-3 and F-4, so I'll just add one square to the existing domain instead of two. I will take F-5r with Ars Lande's permission. Otherwise I will take F-2. Ars, if you read this, please do not expand into F-4. It's a map error that the square appears unoccupied. But F-5r is of course negotiable because you have a lot of squares to add.

As a side note: I'm worried that pet cultures will hold the project back. None of the cultures stagnated or collapsed this round, probably because people would complain if their precious civilization didn't thrive. But obviously there have to be losers eventually. Maybe we should swap! Develop a culture in round two that is descended from a culture in round one, but not necessarily your own! I think it would really help the world become an integrated whole instead of a series of petri dishes. What do you think?

EDIT: also, at some point we will need to have some mechanism for civilizations merging, emerging, and collapsing, and voting may not be effective for this.