Hey, I wanted to showcase Age of Man, a reddit-based community-driven alternate history project. We are a group of writers/history nerds. Our point of diversion/start date was 4000 BC, but we've since advanced to 800-700 BC. In trying to balance game-elements of the community, technological development has been tied to OTL invention dates, but in cultural, linguistic and political terms the similarities between the world of Ageofman and history are more difficult to find.
The most recent map of all active users and their claims.
Each user "commands" their own claim of land, but in practise these are more often a (group of) peoples rather than a united polity, although that varies from user to user. An exceptional example of a claim is the following by ChanelPourHomicide, who writes about the Moiran culture,
https://redd.it/a2iwja. An Old European culture, they are an extrapolation from archaeological evidence, but more familiar cultures such as early Scythians and Chinese people also wander the world. The creation or early development of a religion (
https://redd.it/asgo38), local cultural traditions (
https://redd.it/as7g97) or the construction of world wonders (
https://redd.it/arcans) are examples of what we write about individually, and we come together in diplomacy, cultural diffusion or terrific bronze age conflicts (
https://redd.it/asm52f).
As a moderator of the community, the biggest challenge is to balance elements of game mechanics with creative writing and the development of interesting cultures, historical parallels and striking differences. We are a successor to a now defunct community - HistoricalWorldPowers - in which I originally played the Obibo Empire, or the Alááshu of Tozàn.
Complete with a Yoruba-Igbo fusion conlang developed, the Obibo were a Niger-Congo culture who ended up standing at the cradle of an ancient civilisation in West Africa that would eventually span from Cameroon to Mali in various empires, which rose and collapsed over the course of several centuries. The Alááshu was based on its control over the food supply: an unstable climate makes West Africa prone to famines that can destroy kingdoms, but the Alááshu managed to grow from a niche area into an administration capable of controlling the food supply to such an extent that it could
alleviate the famines. A centralised empire not unlike the Chinese with access to the Malian gold was a force to be reckoned with.
Right now, we are working to open up the Americas to users, because it poses its own set of challenges as far as technological development is considered. What if bronze working, or iron working, made it big across the pond? It is unlikely that the Americas would have not collapsed under the plagues brought by the Eurasians, but in Ageofman it is entirely possible that an American empire manages to hold out. And who says that the Europeans will discover the continent? A state such as the Alááshu could have been perfectly able to, situated closer to South America than anyone else.
While "what if China discovered the Americas?" is not a particularly novel Alternate History scenario, in Ageofman we work with and against each other to create a world with its unique conflicts, so you never know what the future brings unless you see for yourself.
Any questions? I'd be happy to answer. Piqued your interest? Check us out at
https://reddit.com/r/ageofman or
https://discord.gg/QweRmwZ