u/lilbowpete

Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster. I have been searching for mods that I don't think exist, but maybe I have missed something out there and would love to hear what you guys suggest! Let me explain how I play my SP worlds now and what I want out of it first, it might be easier to explain what I am looking for:

I usually will gather starter tools and armor like iron, and then find a cool village I want to transform into something that keeps the villagers safe and make it look cool. I will usually finish one of these and want to create a sort of "trade route" to another village, where I will do the same thing. However, I usually lose steam when I get to village #2 because I start to lose my motivation because of how simple the villager system is. You farm items, trade items, you get emeralds.

What I AM looking for is something that not only makes villages/cities more fun and engaging, but ALSO adds in a system that allows for empires and nations essentially, all in singleplayer. I would also probably use chunk loaders to make sure my cities are always producing the goods I want.

Mods I have already looked into but only get halfway there:

• minecolonies - played this one dozens of times but it has been a few years. I like the process of creating a town and running it, but it does not allow for more than one player controlled city, nor does it have enemy cities/empires to battle against. I do not find the random barbarian raids to be fun, I would prefer if it was a full on city that I could raze or vassalize for my own benefit.
• Ancient Warfare 2 - I have never played this one but it sounds like this is what I am looking for, mixed with minecolonies. The only problem is, as far as I am aware, this is super outdated and I am looking for mods with hopefully modern versions
• Millenaire - I did see they are updating this one again after what feels like a decade, but I have not tried it out yet since it is beta. has anyone tried out the newest version yet? How is the city building aspect of it?
• MCA Reborn - looks promising, i like the dynamics you can have with your villagers, but again, seems to be lacking that empire building aspect.

Those are basically the only mods that get close to what I want, but none of them seem to be an all-in-one, compatible with more modern versions, etc. Does anyone have any idea how to try and achieve the playstyle I want? I know I am asking for mods that basically change the game into something else, but nothing else quite excites my imagination like building cities in minecraft. I am just greedy and want an empire of cities!

Edit: for some grammar, and also, if you think a mod sounds like exactly what I am looking for, I am willing to rollback on the version and try it out. I am just really wanting to try to keep it as close to the modern version of minecraft we have now if possible!

Firstly, my background: I am an Early Medieval/Late Antique historian by trade, but I have always been tangentially fascinated by linguistics, but it is much more of hobby for me than history, so bear with me if this is surface level or dumb. I also tried searching for this answer everywhere and I did not see one, so forgive if this has been asked/answered before!

I was recently reading about Celtiberian as I am deep in a Roman rabbit hole, which sent me down another rabbit hole about the "Insular/Continental" and "P-/Q-" hypotheses about the dissemination of Celtic languages across Europe and I kept running into the term "palatalization" being one of many factors on how and why languages change. This sent me down another rabbit hole...

I read up on the wikipedia page about this and I am left lacking with an explanation for why humans do this, and more importantly, how these (what seem to me) sloppy pronunciations of words ends up sticking and forming new languages. One example I see mentioned a lot is Latin centum (/k/ sound) changes to Italian cento (/s/ sound) as a result of palatalization. I understand that it has something to do with our tongues slipping, for lack of a better term, but like... didn't people realize that they were pronouncing the words wrong? and for that matter, is palatalization so foreign to me because we have modern, systemized, languages today with dictionaries, thesauruses, etc. that would make it easy for someone to correct themselves? I know sometimes I say "didya know?" instead of "did you know?", but I don't think anyone nowadays is going to argue for adding "didya" to the dictionary.

sorry if this is rant-like - like I said, I am deep in rabbit hole-ception while I am typing this and I have a million questions a second it feels like haha any help, answer, or point in the right direction would be extremely helpful!