The Timeline

While I've made a few dev diaries, concerning specific regions, I've never really zoomed out to show the big picture: the entire world in the earliest start dates. I aim to change that here.

The world in 3000 BC is a very different place to how it is later: most of the familiar cultures haven't formed yet, and settled civilisation is limited to a narrow area in the Middle East around a few river valleys. Iron working is a startling technology of the far-flung future, and, if writing was around, you'd probably be seeing ancient bronzepunk novels.

Actually, Bronzepunk would be pretty cool. It would be sort of like the Flintstones, except that it takes itself seriously somehow and has no dinosaurs. I'll set my amazing Bronzepunk novel in an alternate universe where iron doesn't real, but somehow all modern technology is developed using only primitive metalworking techniques. Most of the technology in the book will be normal modern technology, however, but with some hieroglyphs glued on.

One thousand years later, the world will look like this:

So just imagine this but with more yellow and less of the other colours, probably. I don't know, I'm not a history.

A first question is that how will this be dealt with. Because paradox is a bunch of philistines, the game engine doesn't support BCE dates, so I need to shift the 0 point of the calendar somewhere. Totally arbitrarily, I'm going to set the zero point at 4,000 BCE, meaning that conversion from the normal calender to the common era one is just a matter of adding four thousand. Handy.

So, zipping around the world:

Britain is primarily tribal, but with some hunter-gathers still present, especially in the cooler north where agriculture is harder. In southern Britain, there is the Windmill Hill culture, which is centred around Windmill Hill and responsible for building the earliest stages of Stonehenge among other things, and in northern Britain, there is the Grooved Ware culture, centred on Orkney.

In the Denmark region, the remnants of the tribal Funnelbeaker culture hang on, being displaced from most of the continent by their Globular Amphora successors. Further north and to the east, along the coast of Sweden, there are the hunter-gatherers of the Pitted Ware culture.

In Northern France, there is the Seine-Oise-Marne culture, in eastern France, there is the Linear Pottery Culture, and in southern France, there is the Véraza culture.

Spain is in some kind of weird grey zone where it's just described as megalithic but with no Wikipedia links to specific culture names. Maybe, just for fun, I'll make them all Vasconic, to mess with the linguists. The Basque will rise again 5000 years ago! Again, these guys are all tribal - the chiefdoms and copper-working swept in from the south-east of Europe and still hasn't hit the west yet.

Okay, enough bullshitting about the important parts of the world. Time to go

*puts on sunglasses*

Chalcolithic

It just doesn't have the same ring as medieval.

Unless you have a phobia of pottery, in which case "going Chalcolithic" would be absolutely terrifying. Also yeah TW:Chalcolithic Pottery and stuff.

And, in today's environment, those Chalcolithic folk are down in the Middle East and the Nile.

So, first civilisation is Minoa. This wasn't really a term they used for themselves, instead named after the probably fictional King Minos, but I don't care. It's their fault for writing in Linear A and not leaving any convenient translations around. They could have done a Rosetta Stone in hieroglyphs, but no. That would be too convenient for those high-and-mighty "Minoans", wouldn't it?

I can't even type these fuckers because my computer doesn't have the right fonts. That's how awful Linear A is. On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know any good Linear A fonts?

Since they built palaces, they were probably a monarchy, so that's their government type in-game. This is the extent of their grand dominion:

Connoisseurs of Cretan bronze age history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

 The blue provinces (all two of them) are the Minoans. Bronzeworking still hasn't fully reached continental Greece, but it's started doing so, in over the next 200 years Greece will enter the Bronze age and have tons of wonderful chiefdoms that didn't both to exhaustively write down all of their territorial changes in terms of CK2 counties.

Further down is Egypt, comprising a unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. If I was a masochist, I would extend the timeline back to the days of Upper and Lower Egypt, but I'm not; not even my trusty Geacron goes that far back (for those keeping track, that means that I'm almost certainly going to do this).

Connoisseurs of Egyptian bronze age history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

And, going north, you have the city-state of Ebla, seat of Levantine civilisation, and apparently site of the first recorded war between countries in history; between Ebla and Sumer.

Connoisseurs of Levantine bronze age history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

Speaking of Sumer, here it is, the only state society in 3000 BC that isn't a monarchy, but instead a theocracy, being ruled by a priest-king from the clergy.

Connoisseurs of Mesopotamian bronze age history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

 So, that settles the major empires of the timeline extended world in the earliest start date. Here's the rest of the stock Crusader Kings 2 map, for comparison:

The meaning of each colour is left as an exercise for the reader. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure it out.

On Britain

In 3000 BC, Britain begins as a Neolithic bunch of obscure folk, chilling in the isles and making ditches and stuff for future archaeologists to find. Agriculture came to Britain from the continent two thousand years ago, but in places the hunter-gatherers still remain.

The government type map looks like this:

Connoisseurs of British neolithic history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

 Where brown is tribal (the new tribal, not chiefdoms), and yellow is hunter-gathers. Ignore the France in the bottom right corner. The method to decide on these was simple: I looked at the maximum number of baronies in each province, and if it was three or less, I made them hunter-gathers. The exception is Orkney, since they are the home of the grooved ware culture and are therefore more advanced than their primitive British counterparts.

Orkney is technically part of Scandinavia according to the de jure map, and hence not British, but whatever. It's ours now, go team Britain.

Britain of the third millenium BC will all have an as-yet unnamed religion (anyone know any pre-Beaker neopagan restorationist groups?), representing the native religion of the pre-Beaker British peoples, with its five holy sites located around the islands. The map of holy sites will look as such:

These are, for posterity, the counties of Gwynedd, Kildare, Dublin, Orkney, and Wiltshire

This corresponds to a few holy, or at least suspected or theorised to be holy, sites that actually existed in Neolithic britain:

• Bryn Celli Ddu
• Hill of Tara
• Newgrange
• Ring of Brodgar (I know this was built in 2500 BC, 500 years too late. I don't care. I'm an Orkney nationalist now.)
• Stonehenge

Governments 2

Here are all the government types I have planned, as well as brief descriptions of some mechanics.

Feudal

• Monarchy - This is what CKII calls 'Feudal', named more neutrally for pre- and post-Feudal monarchist states (such as the Roman Empire and early modern France).
• Imperial - Whilst CKII treats Imperial administration as a feudal law, Cu&Si will split this off into a separate government type.
• Iqta

Republic

• Republic - These will have patrician families, like merchant republics, and be playable.
• Merchant Republic
• Dictatorship - Similar to republics, however monarchist inheritance laws are available

Nomad

• Hunter-Gatherer - These will be similar to nomads, however retinues will only be light infantry, succession is gavelkind, and titles can not be created.
• Nomad -  These will no longer be forced to be Emperor rank.

Theocracy

• Theocracy - These will be playable.

Tribal 

• Tribal - These will be similar to CKII tribes, however titles can not be created.
• Chiefdom - What CKII calls "Tribal"
• Clan Council - Similar to chiefdoms, but with clan vassals.

Government Types

Ordinary Crusader Kings 2 has a few government types:

• Feudal
• Iqta
• Nomad
• Merchant Republic
• Republic
• Theocracy
• Tribe

Obviously, these are inadequate for the full 5,000 years of entertaining gameplay. A few more a needed.

Hunter-Gatherer
The hunter-gatherer government type represents pre-agricultural humans who, as suggested, hunted and gathered. To properly simulate the hunter-gatherer experience, the only possible succession law will be gavelkind, and forming titles will be impossible. This will limit most hunter-gatherer "realms" to bob around one province, since it's not like sprawling hunter-gatherer empires are a thing.

Like nomads, hunter-gatherers will avoid holdings (being unable to construct any holding type) and will rely on an army raised with prestige or gold, with population and manpower. Unlike nomads, they won't blob over your lovely Eurasia with their bullshit horse armies.

Native Council
Native councils are the government that native Americans and Siberians have in EU4. I don't know much about them, but they'll probably be a mix between republics and tribes in terms of succession and gameplay.

Monarchy
Monarchies will represent despotic and absolute monarchies, rather than the precarious decentralised nobles of the feudal system.

Dictatorship
Dictatorships are the autocratic states of the modern era. I'm not sure how these will work either, but it will be sort of like republics except with less freedom somehow.

Other Changes
Republics will have patricians etc. to allow them to be playable. Theocracies will also be playable. 'Twill be good.