Why are the Khalifatis their own race?

[Imperios]

I just noticed something odd: the game treats Khalifate humans as a race of its own, separate from Loyalist and Knalgan humans as well as necromancers.

Why's that? Aren't they just southern, Arab-ish humans?

Also, why are they vulnerable to crushing attacks?

[fabi]

I just noticed something odd: the game treats Khalifate humans as a race of its own, separate from Loyalist and Knalgan humans as well as necromancers.

Why's that? Aren't they just southern, Arab-ish humans?

That is for technical reasons.
Khalifate units share a unique pool of generated names.
The name pool is bound to the [race] wml tag.

[Ravana]

Another, practical reason is that if all human-like units were grouped together it would be quite difficult to find anything.

Race might not be best word there, but unit groups need some title.

[Andrettin]

I just noticed something odd: the game treats Khalifate humans as a race of its own, separate from Loyalist and Knalgan humans as well as necromancers.

Why's that? Aren't they just southern, Arab-ish humans?

That is for technical reasons.
Khalifate units share a unique pool of generated names.
The name pool is bound to the [race] wml tag.

That makes sense, but couldn't in that case the Khalifate "race"'s name be "Human - Khalifate" or something like that, which would clearly indicate that they are also human?

[Imperios]

That makes sense, but couldn't in that case the Khalifate "race"'s name be "Human - Khalifate" or something like that, which would clearly indicate that they are also human?

Or "Khalifate Human".

Loyalist and Knalgan men could thus be called... "Wesnothian Human"? "Northern Human"?

[Dugi]

Why can't they be named 'humans' as well? It can be a different race, maybe some human-khalifa, but with the same name as humans shown in the game?

Naming them differently than humans suggests that they aren't humans. Which is a bit racist.

Ideally, races could be renamed to 'nations' or 'bloodlines', it's common for nations to have similarly sounding names while not so necessary for races (in USA, you can find a white guy named John Williams and a black guy named John Williams, while for example in Hungary you will find white guys with names like Mészáros Csaba that sound completely different).

[fabi]

I guess people sharing the same pool of names are called "ethnics" or "cultures".

[Dugi]

@fabi
Yeah, that's more accurate. But bloodlines sounds more cool.

[watbesh]

I thought it was because of another issue. Story-wise,
- They say humans hadn't lived on the Great Continent until Haldric and his people came. I can assume the only things to be called 'humans' on that Continent are Haldric's humans.
- Khalifates and Haldric's humans have very different cultures (at least, naming rules, use of magic or technology, and fighting styles such as swordsmanship). Different tribes of orcs, drakes, and so on, usually share one (...a naming rule and a set of abilities) to some extent in a race.

...But they look much alike. I think Khalifates and Haldric's humans are actually the same (or very similar) races which are mistaken for different ones (even by Haldric's humans).

[Velensk]

I'd say that regardless of what race each faction is technically it's convenient to have their units separated in the help files and to have each group clearly labeled and distinguished from one another there. It's also convenient for development and debug mode. I kind of wish that most user made factions would use the race tag to distinguish themselves from each other even if they are all technically humans because the list of 'human' units can get extremely bloated/repetitive (multiple versions of the same unit and such) when you have several add-ons.

[Temuchin Khan]

I thought it was because of another issue. Story-wise,
- They say humans hadn't lived on the Great Continent until Haldric and his people came. I can assume the only things to be called 'humans' on that Continent are Haldric's humans.
- Khalifates and Haldric's humans have very different cultures (at least, naming rules, use of magic or technology, and fighting styles such as swordsmanship). Different tribes of orcs, drakes, and so on, usually share one (...a naming rule and a set of abilities) to some extent in a race.

...But they look much alike. I think Khalifates and Haldric's humans are actually the same (or very similar) races which are mistaken for different ones (even by Haldric's humans).

Now that's an interesting possibility. Khalifate humans came over separately from Wesnothian humans, and the two groups did not recognize one another's humanity, presumably blinded by the cultural and linguistic differences.

[johndh]

This was discussed in the Writer's Forum not long ago: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 15#p573770

The solution I proposed was to have several human race descriptions (which I have provided examples of), as long as it's not too much trouble from a technical standpoint, as from a writer's standpoint it's easy enough to generate some variations. This would also allow us to have different names for Wesfolk and Islefolk in tRoW (and perhaps other early campaigns), which would be pretty interesting for lore nerds like me.

[Andrettin]

The solution I proposed was to have several human race descriptions (which I have provided examples of), as long as it's not too much trouble from a technical standpoint, as from a writer's standpoint it's easy enough to generate some variations. This would also allow us to have different names for Wesfolk and Islefolk in tRoW (and perhaps other early campaigns), which would be pretty interesting for lore nerds like me.

That sounds rather nice indeed =)

[vultraz]

A suggestion I heard on IRC was to emulate the Elder Scrolls series and call them, say, Wesnothians and Khalifate races, even though they're both human. In the Elder Scrolls universe, you have Nords, Bretons, and Imperials, even though they're all human. They're separated for gameplay abstraction.

[Dugi]

Good idea, vultraz.