What are some cool cultures to base a space empire on that aren't already horribly overused?

Hardly. It's "Roman" but the culture is Medieval Greek.

Existing cultures or non-existent cultures?

So the exact same then?

If you're flat out claiming that the western roman empire at its end was culturally indistinguishable from the eastern part as it developed through the middle ages, you are a silly billy.

Of course it was different considering the WRE wasn't ruled by Romans by the end of it. Besides, there's a reason why Rome's culture is always referred to as Greco-Roman.

Elves.

The biggest difference was the influence of christianity in a monolithic state, which didn't have much time to really sink in in the west. The Roman traditional religions had quite a different character. In the East, the christian religion was administered by the state, whereas in the west, the catholic church was a parallel organisation often resented by the actual rulers who replaced the Romans.

It wasn't just that. Rome as people know it has more of a Roman mythos feel to it, with legions and senate and Ave Cesar flavor. The Byzantine empire was already completely christian, it was influenced by eastern tribes and empires to adopt heavy cavalry, there was no senate and throughout the whole empire there was a sense of doom, because it was crumbling for 1000 years, being fucked over by all of its neighbours. Also Rome was never considered the top power in terms of seamanship, but the Byzantines were pretty good at it.

>the Monkish Byzantine Subject
>vs
>the Chad Citizen of Rome

Greeks always viewed Romans as rash and uncivilised barbarians with admittedly superior warfare abilities.

The majority of Roman elite was expected to be schooled in philosophy and other classical Greek disciplines in Greek. They also used Greek as people throughout Europe used French in 18th-19th centuries: to show off their education level.

By the time of Constantine the Western part had seen the troubles of the 3nd century crisis, with much of its economy destroyed. The East, on the other hand, not only had more wealth, a more cosmopolitan culture, a deeper history of that culture thanks to such ancient regions as Syria, Levant, Egypt, but after the division of the Empire also saw better administering.

The East never ceased to be Hellenistic: this is the most important thing to note when talking about the differences. With the Latin culture of the West effectively having no hold anymore, that Hellenic identity quickly moved in. Even though the Byzantines called themselves romaioi, Romans, they were utterly Greek in almost every aspect.

>Chinese
>cool space culture that isn't horribly overused.

As someone who watches a lot of anime I politely disagree.

Uganda

I hope this helps. orionsarm.com/

Start any Civ game on random. Go from there.

>Even though the Byzantines called themselves romaioi, Romans, they were utterly Greek in almost every aspect

So essentially
>WE WUZ ROMAIOI AND SHIET

Yup, they were mockingly called the Empire of the Greeks for a reason.

Western Europeans for a thousand years simply called them "Greeks" and didn't bother with any of that "Romaioi" shit.

West Virginia coal-mining Pentecostal rural country-singer culture

Space Mormons

The one you craft yourself for that novel you've been writing but haven't got past page 3.

Christfinder?

...

Jews in space

We've already had the Prequels.

I've always thought the Aztec idea of ritualized sacrifice could work really well for an antagonist. Especially the idea of "sacrifice powers the gods and staves off the apocalypse".

>Space empire sacrifice entire planets by planet-cracking and sending the entire total of the resources back to their home system, where their greatest armies fight endlessly against the Tzitzimitl, horrific skeletal creatures who tore their way through a portal in their home system's sun during an eclipse.
>Constantly at war because they constantly need to get more resources to fight the Tzitzimitl.
>The Tzitzimitl have succeeded four times before, each time scouring their solar system of life before retreating back into the eclipse. This time, the empire advanced too fast and is able to fight back.
>Worldships resembling the artificial island of Tenochitlan.
>Obsidian-weapon design scaled to futuristic tech: Their guns fire flechettes that shatter inside the wound, creating monofilament splinters that tear their target apart from the inside out.

Surprisingly, I don't remember seeing a lot of Spaniard/Portuguese cultures, which is odd considering how they were so important for the colonization effort and that shit should be whole part of any part of exploration sci-fi.

transhumanist society where breeding is relegated to hive queens so every individual only needs to focus on their work and passions, with no hormonal desire to breed or raise children of their own, instead working for the betterment of themselves and the hi- good of society.

the queens do not actually hold any power and are purely breeding vessels to keep the population stable.

You know what sure is hell isn't overused, judging from Veeky Forums? Using your creativity as opposed to stealing something from history.

Id play it

And Byzantium in Space has been done. Called Fading Suns.

SJG mashed up two of its books in a Pyramid article many years ago to get Celt Space. Very odd.

There's that Classic Greek Space game.

Romans, Nazis, and Murica in space are fairly common.

Battlestar Galactica?

And the Ferengi

Frame of reference for both designer and players is more important that you edgelords want to admit.

TES 3: Morrowind

Space Egyptian is always a classic.

Yeah Star Gate use it a lot, but that did the ancient aliens building the pyramids cliche.

In a setting where every race is a singular monocultural, I'd take be Egyptian over usual the genetic clean cut utilitariansts or gothic space fascists any day. After all If you have to pick a one cultural for all of human civilisation why not the OG?

No, Mesopotamia doesn't count.

>Mesopotamia doesn't count
Why not? It was certainly more culturally monolithic than Egypt, seeing as Egypt got fucked up by both Romans and Mongols

Emple Doketics is best civilization.

>why not the OG?
Indeed, why not the Chinese?

>Queens don't hold any power
>Try and act against their interests
>Queens pull the plug on your population growth until you appease them

Space Mexicans. Theoretically a very rich and influential people, their wealth is distributed among crime families and/or cartels who spend their vast fortunes fighting each other, which is fortunate as they would be (and once were) a mighty empire if they were able to combine their assets together. What passes for a central government is whoever is inoffensive enough to not get under the skin of a major cartel and suffer a sudden accident.

This might surprise you, but it's easier to immerse someone in a video game environment that they can actually see than to immerse someone in an environment based only on someone's description of it.

orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45bc148c97563
orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45bc1c29a38b5
If you want crazy cultures, Orion's Arm has a lot of them.
Also has some articles, what to consider if you want to create on by yourself:
orionsarm.com/eg-article/53727c57a8402
orionsarm.com/eg-article/537285c1964e8
orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b2ddfe5cc19
orionsarm.com/eg-article/4f999d852617e

So... the Hutts and Black Sun from Star Wars? Juan Solo indeed.

bump

Mesopotamia (and humanity) was uplited by aliens
youtube.com/watch?v=ogw6BJRL_rQ

Should have done the same with the "Holy" "Roman" "Empire". What is it with historical European powers and not letting go of the past and larping?

Ask the British "Empire" of today.

What's that?

African

It allows for a pretty grim universe where you lead hard lives, have access to some hand-me-down technology and help, but life is shitty and difficult. At some point the aliens had an ethics crisis and decided that exporting humans for their workforce wasn't okay. Once in a while their medic ships will come down and heal all of the humans, after which you go back to living on the garbage and sorting through it, in the hope of selling some precious ore. You dream of making it out of there but how? Pay an alien smuggler? And at what risk?

There's the old adage that the uniforms of the ceremonial guards get frozen to the moment of the greatest past glory.

Napoleonic era Russia wasn't that powerful or glorious. By that reasoning, those guards should be wearing 60s era commie uniforms.

Some do.

Russian troops watered their horses in the Seine after fighting through Europe in 1814.

The Mongol Empire

No, really.

>Terran planets conquered one after another by a vast fleet of worldships
>The space-borne invaders "live in the saddle", i.e. are so adapted to life in space that they cannot actually survive on the ground (picture thin humans with elongated limbs, ideal for moving around zero-G ships)
>The fleet forces planets to bend the knee with the threat of antimatter bombs; fast attack ships are able to annihilate any defending fleets
>The invaders are generally aloof; so long as a planet obeys their laws and sends tribute, they are allowed to govern themselves
>Conquered planets are forbidden from building spacecraft; conquered races must apply for licenses and religious exemptions to even enter space at all
>The conquerers regard space as Heaven; their civilization ascended long ago for religious reasons and has never gone back.

What about Super-Earth Ocean planets with virtually no dry land? What kind of culture would develop in these?

What about the culture that would develop within the gardener ships destined to colonize the galaxy for thousands of years as some sort of sacred duty?

Non-human ones.

If you mean human colonists, that depends on how fecund they are and how long they've been around. Under enough population pressure, it would get really weird by our standards.
>Arable land would be prized, farmers would be like feudal lords, managing their land, providing for its defense, and passing it on to their children
>except probably with robots doing the work instead of peasants
>people might actually volunteer for stints of farm labor just to get fresh air and sunlight
>most of the non-arable land would be used for vacation spots
>the urban, industrial, and aquacultural parts of the civilization would be no less than 200ft underwater to avoid wave action - a planet like that would have near permanent hurricanes, larger and stronger than anything we get here on Earth

Why don't you just do a Polynesian-based empire?
> Travel incredible distances across space
> Incredible Navigators
> Maori warrior culture
> you can do space cannibals if you want
It's an underused concept that is like to play a game in. You get sick of rome expys after a while.

They are not good candidates for native technological life, but are good targets of colonizations. The abundance and complexity of life depends on how deep the ocean is. The shallower it is, the more life it would have. The deepest, the more life would be limited to thermal vents (difficulty with light reaching the lower depths for photosinses). The deepest planets could have such monstrous pressure at the bottom, that water becomes solid and probably barren. .

>The deepest planets could have such monstrous pressure at the bottom, that water becomes solid
Someone should have paid more attention in high school chemistry. Water is MORE likely to remain liquid at higher pressure for a given temperature. Ice is less dense.

The Vatican?

The Old South.

>Inb4 Firefly or Starcraft

Firefly is a space Western that draws more on the West, while Starcraft draws FAR more on the post-Reconstruction South. An Old South themed empire could be very widespread, with its planets being relatively "rural" outside of the port cities. Sticking industry in space could preserve the aesthetic as well.

>Upper class with pretensions of aristocracy
>Love/hate relationship with primitive native xenos
>Extremely decentralized government
>Due to sparse military presence, populace is heavily armed
>Deeply religious, but Space Protestant rather than Catholic
>Government is generally fairly minimal, but the cultural conservatism is extremely strong and social norms are sometimes enforced outside the law
>Free-market economics clash with traditional, pseudo-feudal ideals
>Taking alien land is illegal on paper but rarely enforced

If you want to be extraordinarily dull and predictable, you can throw in slavery of some sort, too.

You would have make up starships that are as much as perplexing for us as Polynesians' canoes. On close scrutiny though, they would have to make sense as very elegant solutions.

You would have colonisers on mad dashes across the void that is between stars, many perishing but some reaching their destinations still.

Also the exploration would have to be step-by-step and gradual. Maybe make them an offshoot of a civilisation from a territory closer to a bigger empire (China).

>they were mockingly called the Empire of the Greeks for a reason
Because the western barbarians desperately wanted to pretend they had any claim to the title of Roman and refused to admit they didn't to the point of refusing to acknowledge the fact the people in the east never stopped being Roman because their half of the empire never fell apart.

...

It's a Terran battlecruiser from Starcraft.

Mhm. Western Europe was a pretty insignificant post-apocalyptic place with cities almost deserted.
In 8th-9th century, Constantinople had around 700K, Muslim Corduba ~400K. That's if we don't talk about Chang'an with its ~800K (and that is after the An Lusha rebellion!), Baghdad with another ~700K etc.

Mass deurbanisation of the West had roots in the 3rd century crisis when long-distance trade based economy largely disintegrated causing a shift to local manorial production and a focus on self-sustenance rather than an import/export balance. By the time of early Carolingians the early feudal system was fully formed, and it won't be until nation states begin to centralise under absolute monarchies in the Late Medieval that urbanisation becomes a thing again.

On the other hand, Byzantine Empire essentially carried the same urbanised, cosmopolitan Hellenistic organisation throughout ages from the Greece of Antiquity into the Middle Ages. They failed to innovate, partly because of Christian indoctrination, partly because of having to persevere in a very shitty environment, that of constant barbarian incursions, plague, unrest, Persians being nasty, and later—vacuum-filling Islam expansion. It was exceptionally strenuous to keep the core territories intact, and Byzantium never managed to truly defeat its enemies so that the innovative impetus (which was there, remember the Greek fire) could be effectively transformed into meaningful progress.

All the while, Muslims had their Islamic golden age, and even Western Europe saw its High Middle Ages, a period of slow transformation, and what arguably can be called the 14th century crisis (a cooling of climate, Black Death etc.) that in the end kickstarted the whole Renaissance thing. Islamic states only saw occasional internal struggle during an almost five century long period. Western Europe was essentially left to its devices after 732.

Imageboard culture

robots who were created to serve a species, but some event occurred where the species where all killed, leaving only the robots. somewhere along the eay, the robots start to believe that they are the original species, and they all live with 100% confidence in that

Who the fuck needs slaves when you have robots?

No, user. Normal everday's ice is less dense. However, there are many types or ice. You see, temperature is not the only way to change mater phases. At lower pressure water becomes steam without having to chamge temperature, a nice experiment to do in introductory classes to physics and the reason why water boils more easily up on a mountain. At higher pressure, water becomes ice that ot is denser than liquid water, not the kind you are used too.

Fucking PRAWNS you dumb cunt.

I want to run the Star Gate SG1 as a rpg and there is one but I haven't read a ton of it. I always felt like the core idea and how they handled the aliens was good enough to lay ground work into say making you're own Campaign.

I like it.

Kudos user.

Makes nice use of the dirtside/spacer or planetbound/belter divide that appears in a lot of other work. Well done.

>egypt got fucked up by the mongols
???

The Mongols effectively erased at least one major city. I think it was Baghdad. Filled in the canals that fed water to the city, burned all the buildings that could be burned, and demolished the rest. It was centuries before Baghdad was able to be a city again.

Baghdad is in Iraq. A couple countries north and east. Between the Tigris and the Euphrates, not around the Nile.

The SG1 RPG is SpyCraft/d20; mostly the first
To make it really work you have to home rule some parts

Is this what you greeks learn in school and think people take seriously

looks better than soulless uniforms of today desu

Anything that isn't roman or nazi

Yeah it was a good pretty good universe and works well for an rpg (I was really miffed when the mmo got canned and I hate mmos)

The RPG was a typical d20 affair from what I heard. Make of that what you will.

The Egyptian after life is just so weirdly literal. Which oddly enough isn't how the after life works in the show.

Celts, maybe? There are plenty of Roman, Greek, Euro-gothic, Renaissance and Norse space empires in fiction but I don't think I've seen any Celtic ones. You have plenty of options there too. From the Fenian-Pictish feel of Scottish and Irish Celts to the Gauls and Iberian Celts.
If I'm after missing some obvious example of Space-Celts, feel free to correct me, honestly it's just something i want to see done.

Mexico

bump

>allowing them to close their legs
who said they could stop being pregnant?

Nobody, which is part of why it would be dull and predictable. There's a case to be made for having particularly pleasant aliens as domestic slaves, but that's about it. Unfortunately, when people think of the Old South, they usually think "slavery" - which, obviously, isn't wrong, but the problem is that it usually stops there and ignores the rest of it.

>Perplexing yet simple, gradual exploration, braving the void
Would that be seed ships/generation ships?

If the culture is civilized, think of Kamino from Star Wars. If it is not, think of the film Waterworld.