Why is Basil II separate from Rome, but Kublai rules over China?

[Uberfrog]

Why do you think that somehow you know better than professional historians? They use the term Byzantine Empire to distinguish that successor state from the original Roman Empire.

It’s already been linked in this thread, but https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674986510 . Scholars of the Byzantine empire tend to recognise the continuity.

Are there key differences between the Roman Empire of Augustus and the Roman Empire of Basil II? Sure, but find me a civ where that isn’t the case. There’s a world of difference between the England of Alfred and the England of Victoria.

The weird thing about Civ is that we have a game that plays for thousands of years, but the civilisations we play, especially the European ones, tend to be quite narrow snapshots of a specific period. That’s why “blobs” like India feel even weirder. I hope future games have a bit more scope for evolution through the ages (like, but not quite, Humankind).

 

[Narcisse]

Byzantium was the continuation of the Roman Empire, but in my humble opinion is a quite distinct culture in its later form. Byzantium as the Empire without Rome, which is no longer in the integration and assihimilation of foreign religions but in the forced conversion to the monotheism, the polarity of the empire located further east, the dominant multiculturalities of the empire have changed (the Greeks, the Rus, Anglo-Saxons, Armenians, Georgians, Serbs etc ...).

I mean, the claims and the heritages of the Roman Empire through Byzantium are "legit", but the various cultures which dominate these two "entities" are really different (in proportion and some other encounters are totally new to the empire and will participate in forging its new identity).

For me it's like trying to do a Civilization of modern Turkey with an Ottomans leader, or an Ottoman Civ with Ataturk as leader. Yes the historical continuity is obvious, but in term of "archetype", in term of cultural constitutions of the land, in term of identity, they are distinct enough to be highlighted in an historical context game and make an interesting Civ to play.

And IMO, China, India and Arabia derserves the same treatement. Well China is a bit complicated for marketing reasons. But I wouldn't mind having Gandhi / India and Babur / Mughal in the same Civ game for exemple. Or having Charlemagne with Franks, and some leader of industrial France, instead of two iterations of medieval-renaissance-ish France. Well, Arabia is a mess since a long time, what it ever means for Saladin or Harun al-Rashid leads Arabia ?
They made good effort with Gauls instead of Celts, in the sense than Gaul is a blobbish roman term, BUT allow to focus a bit more on a more distinct design of leader, units, bonus, etc .

Anyway, with the current system of alternate leader in Civ 6, they can't show how distinct enough are these phases in the History of Civilizations. Alternate leader right now don't encompass enough distinctions to make interesting design for Byzantium IMO. They were the most influential civilization in medieval europe, the most coveted city of Constantinople, the crossroads which make Byzantium a marching powerhouse, which preserved immense knowledge (which will be largely lost with the 4th crusade), which had a form of religious fanaticism , and a singular aesthetic around Christian theology (the HRE crown is inspired of a Byzantine crown, all their clothings and jewelry were so singular).
And all their singular units (the "Immortals" kataphractos armed with maces, the Varangian guards, the Dromons, the liquid fire grenades which will be adopted by the Abbassids and Fatimids, the most powerful navy of medieval Europe until they were ruined by Sicilio-Normans, the Armenian border guards, etc ...). And by the way their impressive architecture.

Basil II leading Rome would just feel a bit odd for me, he is the perfect example with its dynasty of the cultures that forged the polarized empire further east and the cultural "clashes" with slavic cultures. And we will lost a lot of gamey thing if we mix Byzantium and Rome in next the game, again just my opinion. But I must admit than some other leaders of the early part of "Byzantine" period could totally work as alternate leader.

For Macedon, it's a bit tricky, I don't mind Alexander leading Greece, but I must admit than he was way more than Greece. So having its own thing with Macedon is okay-ish in Civ 6. It's just than for me it is a problem rather from the beginning, a lot of slots in the game have been devoted to a "similar" period for Hellenic civilizations. I would easily cut Sparta at launch to have something as influential as Byzantium (well I'm a bit biased because I am way more interessed in the influence of late and medieval roman empire and their relations with islamic empires and crusaders, but for me all their archievement deserve to be represented if you want something from medieval europe at launch for an historical game). As always, it's more a question of game design, "Greece" naming was not even a thing it is period. Alexander should lead Greece Civ, if he had a bonus related to hellenism spreading. But I would not mind having Civ 7 with Phillip II leading Greece only through a bonus related to League of Corinth, or some other gamey design, instead of the currents ones, which take a lot of slots, and are not that good.

At the end, I wouldn't mind having Civ 7, with Rome leaded by Justinian or Constantine at launch, to not have this never ending debate But I'm happy to have Basil II which highlight something more specific and which for me, don't work at all as alternate leader for the current Rome in Civ 6. (and Byzantium gift us of an amazing ost too )

Edit : On a technical level, the work on the leaders already seems very costly in resources for the team, without being very interesting on the gameplay aspect (even if it is an interesting aspect for the side "to represent another period of a "same civilization" or "to represent a civilization which was a bunch of city states or tribes, as renaissance italy, ancient greece, or celts), at least not interesting in civ 6 maybe it will be in 7, but personally, I do not see a problem that they abandon the concept, to have more distinct civ in return.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

Following the same logic then Holy Roman Empire is also Roman Empire, since there emperors would call themselves "Emperor of the Romans" (Rex Romanorum) as well.

Oh, come on, it's two totally different things and you know it! And for all the people saying that "the Ottomans, the HRE and Russia considered themselves Romans, so should they be included in Rome in Civ?" as a gotcha question is just high levels of sophistics.

On one hand, we have a big empire that went from Gibraltar to Judea, then which spiltted in two, while both parts still considered themselves as True Romans and the Roman Empire. The Eastern part has clearly a legitimacy to call themselves the Roman Empire.

On the other hand, we have a bunch of germanic barbarians, who had only a small fraction of them who were inside the borders of the empire, that saw from afar the fall of one half of this mighty empire, then, a couple of centuries later, went:


You can't say it's the same level of "legitimacy" to call yourself Roman!

Same for Ottomans and their right of conquest: when Germany invaded France during WWII, they never suddenly became French ! The Imperium is not like wands in Harry Potter, when you gain the magic wand of your adversary if you defeat them in duel!

As for the "Byzantium was clearly different than the Roma Republic"... Well, I hope so! I don't want a country/culture/nation to stagnate for 2000 years! We literally have a British leading England, while, technically, Victoria isn't even the Queen of England because this title disappeared with the Queen Anne, Victoria being the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. There is a clearer division between William the Conqueror's England and Victoria's Great Britain, and still we see a continuity... But for Rome and East Rome, suddenly this continuity disappear?

Stop trying to see rational justification for this, and admit it: you're just byzaboos that love Byzantium and want it separate in the game, so aknowledge that it's way more arbitrary than a lot of other decisions in civ 6. And, remember, every arbitrary decision should be challenged once in a while!

Eleanor is okay with France but awful with England.

I do think Eleanor works okay. With France you want to build TS anyway with wonders. For England its not obvious but if you turn on the Monopolies and Corporations game mode you can now fill your RND with product slots to flip cities.

Unpopular opinion, maybe, but Eleanor is stronger with England than France (even without M&C). Sure, at first glance, we might think "oooh, bonuses to wonders, France is a cultural empire so it would go well with Eleanor's Great Works!". Except that, if you want to loyalty flip cities on another continent, how do you do that with France? Freleanor has no bonuses to building TS nor gaining Great Works. She has a bonus to loyalty through GW, but, let's be honest, it's difficult to build Wonders with GW slots in your border cities... So France's Grand Tour is of marginally help for Eleanor.
On the other hand, if you have to flip cities on another continent, Engleanor's maritime powers will rise! Plop two cities (or conquer them with your massive fleet) on another continent, plop some RND that wll help with the low loyalyt at the beginning, use, military engineers to rush aqueducts and dams to grow your population, and bam! You have to cities with high populaion, ready to go on loyalty flipping with TS and EC you'll build just after that.
Freleanor is clearly more passive, and thus weaker, than Engleanor.

 

[Narcisse]

Stop trying to see rational justification for this, and admit it: you're just byzaboos that love Byzantium and want it separate in the game, so aknowledge that it's way more arbitrary than a lot of other decisions in civ 6. And, remember, every arbitrary decision should be challenged once in a while!

Well personally, for me separating Byzantium and Rome is showing than it's working, they have an interesting and distinct design in term of gameplay and flavor. Yes, it's arbitrary, but for me if it's a good design, it show than it's the "blobbish" Civ which need to be questionned not the opposite.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

Well personally, for me separating Byzantium and Rome is showing than it's working, they have an interesting and distinct design in term of gameplay and flavor. Yes, it's arbitrary, but for me if it's a good design, it show than it's the "blobbish" Civ which need to be questionned not the opposite.

I will always be an ardent defender or "gameplay over roleplay", but I personally don't find Byzantium's design attractive... but that's only on me.
We also know that we'll have only a finite number of civs and leaders in the game. 50 civs, 58 leaders, it's quite big already... And yet, in all this furnace, one of the few blob that is indeed deblobbed from the beginning is Rome...

 

[Narcisse]

at the end, it's always a bit arbitrary and a question of popularity too. If one of the purpose here is to "decrease the number of european civ" in the game, we could consider a lot of "cursed" design which would be not way more blobish than a lot of the current design.

For exemple : put only one Greece civ, leaded by a late Byzantine emperor, the dromon, an unit relative to the revolution of 19th century, some bonus relatives to shipowners (and money) and orthodoxy .
The largest usage of the word Greeks was as exonym for medieval romans and an exonym for modern greece. And at the end, modern greece have the most of byzantine heritage and claims (way more remains and heritage than antique ones actually) when Italians don't really care about eastern empire history

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Because neither Rome nor the Byzantines have any modern nation state that refers strictly to them and China has. And people are looking from modern states perspective thats why some of them want Italy rather than Venice or Rome despite the fact both Rome and Venice were historically more significant than a modern Italian State.
And no. It is not eurocentrism. If the game would be sinocentric we woudn't have Tibet anyway. Because of Chinese politics and Chinese narative perspective. Deblobing China is far more eurocentric idea than a Chinese one.

 

[Narcisse]

he, I don't see why deblobing China in Civ would be an "eurocentric" desire, because it is in opposition with modern China perspective.
It's not eurocentric to just love History, and wanting to have a more detailled view and multiple design for a so rich and long History than the one of China.

And yes that's the point, I highly prefer having Civ being splitted and distinct, as Rome, Venice and Italy being different Civ, instead of merging and using alternate leaders. But it's an arbitrary preference, Italy leaded by a renaissance Florentine leader could work.

 

[João III]

Sorry person from hundreds of year ago but, even though you have considered yourself Roman for your entire life and everyone in your family and town have considered themselves Roman for generations upon generations and have lived in a part of the world traditionally ruled by Rome for centuries you actually aren't Roman because you are idiot who doesn't actually know anything like smart people in the future do.

Don't even have to go back hundreds of years. Greece conducted a census after WWI and found people on Aegean islands identifying as Roman.

And IMO, China, India and Arabia derserves the same treatement.

I didn't even consider Arabia, but that's a good good point. Would be interesting to see Muslim Iberia represented in some capacity beyond a city-state

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

he, I don't see why deblobing China in Civ would be an "eurocentric" desire, because it is in opposition with modern China perspective.
It's not eurocentric to just love History, and wanting to have a more detailled view and multiple design for a so rich and long History than the one of China.

And yes that's the point, I highly prefer having Civ being splitted and distinct, as Rome, Venice and Italy being different Civ, instead of merging and using alternate leaders. But it's an arbitrary preference, Italy leaded by a renaissance Florentine leader could work.

It is not. But it is more western desire than a chinese so argument China is blob because of eurocentrism is not true. I would love to see Tibet, but it will never happen not because of eurocentrism, but because of chinese aproach.
As for distinct Civs and Italy I agree with you. But many people look from modern nation state perspective and many distinct and interesting Civs are gobbling up by desire of that "modern" behemot". Italy is a great example, but mixing The Celtic orgins with Ireland or Scotland or even Viking era Scandinavia with modern Norway are kinda part of this mind set too.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

And no. It is not eurocentrism. If the game would be sinocentric we woudn't have Tibet anyway. Because of Chinese politics and Chinese narative perspective. Deblobing China is far more eurocentric idea than a Chinese one.

Maybe focusing on China is a bad idea because it's, well, complicated. Let's rather focus on India and its deblobbing.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Is the debate here really about "what does a 'Civilization' represent?" and less about the specific cases? What does continuity mean? When does "a people" stop being a people?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I will always be an ardent defender or "gameplay over roleplay", but I personally don't find Byzantium's design attractive... but that's only on me.
We also know that we'll have only a finite number of civs and leaders in the game. 50 civs, 58 leaders, it's quite big already... And yet, in all this furnace, one of the few blob that is indeed deblobbed from the beginning is Rome...

I will agree that Byzantium is definitely not the best designed game, but that's not a fair argument that it needs to be blobbed in to Rome which already has a basic design to begin with. I mean they designed it to be a Basil II civ, so in that regard it does work. Plus from a gameplay perspective I want my greek-fire spitting dromons, and the Hippodrome is one of the prettiest unique districts on the map so I'm not complaining.

I didn't even consider Arabia, but that's a good good point. Would be interesting to see Muslim Iberia represented in some capacity beyond a city-state

Well we've had Morocco before. I think the main problem with representing Al-Andalus is you are going to have overlap in cities with Spain and Portugal.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I will agree that Byzantium is definitely not the best designed game, but that's not a fair argument that it needs to be blobbed in to Rome which already has a basic design to begin with. I mean they designed it to be a Basil II civ, so in that regard it does work. Plus from a gameplay perspective I want my greek-fire spitting dromons, and the Hippodrome is one of the prettiest unique districts on the map so I'm not complaining.

I still think the hippodrome would have made a great common unique between Rome and Byzantium. Rome really needed more of a "bread-and-circuses" flavor and the baths were kind of obviated after Hungary was added.

Well we've had Morocco before. I think the main problem with representing Al-Andalus is you are going to have overlap in cities with Spain and Portugal.

Well, we have Scotland crowding out England and the Belgicae squeezing in between France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Given VI's sensibilities, an Al-Andalus civ really wouldn't be that surprising. Although I think an Almoravid/Almohid civ might hit a happier medium if we wanted to cover both Moorish Iberia and Morocco.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well, we have Scotland crowding out England and the Belgicae squeezing in between France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Given VI's sensibilities, an Al-Andalus civ really wouldn't be that surprising. Although I think an Almoravid/Almohid civ might hit a happier medium if we wanted to cover both Moorish Iberia and Morocco.

I mean they took Granada from Spain, and made it into a city-state with an alcazar improvement. I feel that was the best we were going to get unless they started to take out Seville, Cordoba etc. as well.
Maybe next game we'll get Al-Andalus and Isabella will only come with Madrid and you have to (re)conquer cities, instead of founding them.

 

[João III]

Well we've had Morocco before. I think the main problem with representing Al-Andalus is you are going to have overlap in cities with Spain and Portugal.

On the topic of Byzantium, their city list has significant overlap with the Ottomans' list. Not saying that's necessarily ideal, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for Firaxis.
Constantinople & Istanbul
Adrianople & Edirne
Trebizond & Trabzon
Ancyra & Ankara
Amaseia & Amasya
Iconium & Konya

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

On the topic of Byzantium, their city list has significant overlap with the Ottomans' list. Not saying that's necessarily ideal, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for Firaxis.
Constantinople & Istanbul
Adrianople & Edirne
Trebizond & Trabzon
Ancyra & Ankara
Amaseia & Amasya
Iconium & Konya

Aleppo & Halab (Arabian) & Halep (Ottoman)

Also, are there any cities that are in 3 or more civ's lists?

 

[Evie]

In a game which is (by nature) limited to a very small number of civs, it would be downright criminal to start breaking down perfectly reasonable civilizations (yes, China is a perfectly reasonable civilization) into their sub-component while ignoring vast swathes of the world that don't get civilizations at all.

Also, a civilization is not the same as a political state, and what the game has is civilizations, not States. Some civilizations never formed states; some states were never civilizations or were in fact part of a broader civilization. The daft idea of deblobbing Germany and the Holy Roman Empire (which was a German state) ; the equally daft idea that because they were politically independent the Italian City States should be represented each as their own civilization rather than having one Italian Civilization representing Medieval-Renaissance-Modern Italy are the result of that false equivalency between state and civilization).

In the same way, just because a political state is the legitimate political continuation of another, doesn't mean that in terms of civilization they are one and the same. In a lot of ways, in terms of civilization (which have more to do with culture, language and geography than political continuity), Byzantium was a continuation of *Greek* civilization (and that's a good thing), even while being the political continuation of the Roman Empire.

Is that kind of duality, combined with the long existence of Byzantium itself, enough to call for a separate civilization? To me, it's borderline. Yes, Byzantium was a mix of Greek and Roman, that existed on its own for a millenia; these are strong factor to consider it its own separate thing. On the other hand, both politically and culturally, it was a continuation of two groups that already exist in the game. At the end of the day, we could have or not have Byzantium, and I'd be okay either way.

Not so with China. There's no duality here: there's wide amount of cultural (with foreign influence), linguistic and geographic continuity between the various Chinese dynasties, and political continuity too. Even the period of foreign dynasties largely consisted of conquerors trying to work with Chinese culture and political continuity, rather than trying to change Chinese culture. The Manchu and Tibetans (they were linguistically, culturally, geographically and mostly politically distinct) would be valid choices to add, but there we have to contend with Chinese political sensibilities (sadly) and market access.

India could be broken up, but Maurya vs Modern India is probably not the best way to do it (Mughal just might work, but even that is iffy) - that again is more political distinction than civilization one. Including a civilization representing Southern India, which was always distinct from the succession of empires in the North, probably make more sense.

Arabia can likewise be broken up. Persians and Turks already have their own separate existence, and Berbers should be their own civilization out west as well (m ore so than Morocco or Al-Andalus, which are more political states, not civilizations), They were part of the Arabian empire at its height (like Persia), but they resumed their independence fairly quickly .

 

[EgonSpengler]

Addendum: would you rather see China split or Rome and Byzantium combined?

The former. I enjoy Civ as a kind of "alternative history" generator, and to that end, I think it would be fun to see some "almost were" and "also-ran" civs, people who in effect lost the real-world game of Civ. In a lot of cases, I suppose we might not have enough information to go on (the Hittites? the folks who built Cahokia). And in some cases, the politics might not be worth the hassle (the Confederate States of America). I guess the question with multiple different Civs representing, for example, China's Warring States period or more Native American cultures would be whether the resulting Civs would be distinct enough from each other in their game mechanics, but that shouldn't be too hard, should it? Just need to get a little creative, I would think.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

On the topic of Byzantium, their city list has significant overlap with the Ottomans' list. Not saying that's necessarily ideal, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for Firaxis.
Constantinople & Istanbul
Adrianople & Edirne
Trebizond & Trabzon
Ancyra & Ankara
Amaseia & Amasya
Iconium & Konya

Yes they do, but I do know that Byzantium uses the Greek names while the Ottomans use the Turkish names, so they are considered separate cities, according to the game. I'm not too sure how many differences there are in terms of Portuguese and Spanish names and Arabic names.