Based on what I have posted previously, I would like to point out a few observations, which I think needs our attention.
1) NATO vs. EU. At the moment, NATO is significantly weaker than EU. In fact, NATO only consists of 3 significant powers, namely UK, Turkey and Norway. In comparison, EU is make up of France, Germany, Spain, Italy to just name a few, the imbalance would comes as no surprise. If the initial reason was to weaken EU by splitting Europe into the two, I would think they should be at least closer in size. Moreover, NATO, which consists of just so few nations in comparison to the reality, makes it a bit unrealistic.
2) Africa. DVS already pointed out that Africa needs further look into once the city placement is started, I guess it is something we are aware of before. To be specific, I think the African Union is way too powerful, because in reality, it is only a hypothetical group of minor African nations which are no where as powerful as the selected African nations to be represented on their own (South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria etc). Moreover, the choices of the Independent African States seems a bit arbitrary to me. May be there is some links between Morocco, Libya, Zimbabwe and Kenya that I overlooked?
3) Latin America. In general, I think the selections are well chosen. But there is a similar problem to Africa but to a lesser extent. That is, the south America Socialist Allies will be more powerful than say Colombia or Peru.
4) Asia. In general, I think the selections are well chosen. May be a few nations are missing and can be discussed as to whether they should be combined to their neighbor or put them as minor nations/ barbarians.
5) Failed States. Making the failed states to form an ally seems a bit unrealistic. If they can do so well in diplomatic, they probably wouldn't be known as failed states. At the moment, the Failed States is greater than quit a few African nations and it is quit unrealistic.
I would make the following suggestions for our consideration:
1) I respect the consensus on having EU as one nation, so I would suggest to keep EU in general but removing NATO and replace it by the Commonwealth Realm. Note that I meant
Commonwealth Realm NOT the
Commonwealth of Nations. The former, consisting mainly the UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, shares a common Queen in constitution, mostly Anglo-Saxon in their demographics, sharing the same language and their political stances most of the time. If keeping EU to represent the countries within the Eurozone, EU and Commonwealth Realm are completely exclusive to one another! This is very different in the case of EU vs NATO. Moreover, we can then have EU, USA and Commonwealth Realm and some minor nations to form the NATO allies - a much more realistic NATO.
In consequence, this is what I would suggest for Europe:
Reduce EU to the Eurozone
Change NATO to Commonwealth Realm
Add the following civ:
Denmark, Norway and Iceland as one civ (Call Scandinavia if you like)
Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria as one civ (Call Balkan states if you like)
Poland as one civ
Turkey as one civ
Remove the following civ:
Australia
Canada
Belarus
Expand the following civ:
Neutrals (include Sweden, in fact I would suggest to remove those non European neutrals in here)
Russia (include Belarus)
Ukraine (include Baltic states)
Georgia (include Azerbaijan)
Put these under Minor state or Barbarians:
Serbia, Croatia and Albania.
2, 3 & 4)
In general, I would suggest to try combining the minor states into the bigger neighbors instead of grouping too many minor states together as one as in the case of African Union. This will help reducing the sizes of African Union and South America Socialist Allies (Actually, this should be called
Latin America Socialist to be more accurate).
5) Do we really have to have the Failed states as a civ? Can't we represent it just by Barbarians?
It takes me a lot to write but in summary I am not suggesting to change the civ list a lot. I am actually only suggesting to remove 4 existing civs (Australia, Canada, Belarus and Failed States) and replace by 4 new civs (Scans, Balkan, Poland and Turkey) out of the 48 civs in the list (not counting NATO -> Commonwealth because the leader head can stay the same).
Hope we can consider this.