Favourite Civs for an expansion - proper poll using Alexanders research

camarilla's pretty much proven in here that he has no idea what he's talking about.

phungus420 said:

Leaving out Spain is like leaving out England, or Egypt, or America, or Greece. It just makes no sense.

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And so? I don't see any problem there... wouldn't Civ5 be playable and enjoyable even without England or Greece? Of course yes...

I simply fail to understand the people desperate because their favorite civ isn't in... when in Civ4 the only differences between a civilization and another are a leaderhead (which you do not even see if you are playing that country) an unique building, an unique unit and a couple of traits giving nothing more than some nice bonuses... in Civ5 things could be a little different but not that much.
You play the game in the exact same way no matter if you are England, Spain, Greece, China or whatever else you want... there are a few tiny differences that can bring to slightly diffrent strategies but nothing big... it's always the same game.

So what's the problem if they decide to leave Spain... or England or Greece out of the picture? Playing as any other country will give you roughly the same experience, so relax and stop with this nonsense.
They could have used fictional civs instead of historical ones and the game would still play the same... apart maybe than on boring, static earth maps that only 1% of the players play.

Tomice said:

First, to answer the maya question: Inca and Aztecs have been in Civ already, Maya haven't. That's the reason. Adding all three would be an overkill except if we had more than 30 civ-slots. I'm not sure which SA native culture is the worthiest. You may open a thread about natives from both Americas if you like, it would be interesting.

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You are incorrect here. The Mayans were in both Civ3: Conquests and Civ4: Beyond the Sword.

It's not overkill to have all three, because the Americas are underrepresented as it is. In fact, I would say that that the Mayans are more "civworthy" than either the Aztecs or Incans in both their accomplishments and longevity (not to say that Aztecs and Incans shouldn't be in because of that, however).

Anyway, I get the feeling that this thread and poll might have been better served by being two polls; one for which civs you want to come back that have already been in Civ, and one for which new civs you want. As it is, the voting is skewed in favor of the civs that most people are familiar with, the favorite ones they've played with in BtS already. It was a good idea in principle though. Thanks for the name recognition too.

As it is, the voting is skewed in favor of the civs that most people are familiar with

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I don't think this is quite fair; there is an endogeneity problem here. People are voting for the civs that they think are most important, and the civs that people think are most important are also mostly those that designers chose to put in previous versions of the game.

I don't think people are voting for them just out of familiarity.

awesome said:

camarilla's pretty much proven in here that he has no idea what he's talking about.

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Not so. More accurately, those arguments demonstrate how ethnocentrism plays a major role in "history", "truth" and "reality".

It applies to Americans and anyone else in western society or "1st world nations" as much as anyone else. Our areas of blindness & misconceptions are just different.

Tomice said:

Yes, "orient" means "middle east" in German. It's the traditional medieval expression, when Europe sometimes was called "occident" and other parts of the world were hardly known. They are similar to "Abendland" (evening land, europe) and "Morgenland" (morning land, the middle east). In modern news reports, they use "Naher Osten" (Near East) frequently.

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I'm not sure the term means quite the same thing in modern English that it does in German(and you even seem to suggest that in German it is a medieval usage), especially when I see in your poll that you include Israel in the Orient category. In English the term seems to be centered more around the Far East, with some inclusion of Mid Eastern and Indian cultural influences. I think perhaps your use of the term in this poll is not entirely correct in the English sense. Your point gets across adequately so it's not a big issue, I only mention it because another poster suggested that your usage of the word confirmed his definition of it.

Come on Poland!!!

where's the spirit??!?!

Poles love to unite when under pressure

I get the feeling that I need to break these Civs down into rough cultural spheres of influence for people to see the representation. The bold "5" indicates possible/probable inclusion in Civ5 (based on news items) and the "*" indicates my suggestions for Civs that have never been in the game before. The rest have all been in Civ games before, but are not currently in Civ5, as far as we know.

Colonial America:
5 Americans
*Latin Americans

Near Eastern Asia:
5 Arabs
*Assyrians
Babylonians
5 Egyptians
*Hebrews
Hittites
5 Ottoman Turks
5 Persians
Sumerians

Northern Europe:
Celts
Dutch
5 English
5 French
5 Germans/HRE
*Polish
5 Russians
Vikings

Pre-Columbian America:
5 Aztecs
5 Incans
*Olmecs
Mayans
Native Americans/Iroquois/Sioux

Mediterranean:
Byzantines
Carthaginians
5 Greeks
*Minoans
*Moors
*Phoenicians
Portuguese
5 Romans
Spanish

Far Eastern Asia:
*Chola/Tamil
5 Chinese
5 Indians
5 Japanese
*Kushans
Khmer
Koreans
5 Mongols
5 Siamese
*Tibetans
*Vietnamese

Sub-Saharan Africa:
Ethiopians
*Kuhorsehockyes/Nubians
Malinese
5 Songhai
Zulus

Oceania:
*Majapahit/Javanese
*Polynesians

Forgive me for placing the Egyptians in the Near Eastern group. IMHO they're diverse enough to have their own, because they would also fit into both the Mediterranean and Africa, but I had to put them somewhere.

Giordano Léonce;9034479 said:

"IMO", Spain must be in civ, if not in vanilla, and least an expansion pack.

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There you go, was it really that hard to say?

Ahriman said:

Why the emphasis on *constitutional* democracy? There are plenty of democracies throughout the world that do not rely on a formal written constitution - ex British Empire in particular.

If the US had not happened, then Britain would have continued to liberalize and democratize further. The English Crown had been losing power for centuries, and would have continued to do so, particularly with the industrial revoluation (which would have happened without the US) which put wealth and power into the hands of nouveau riche capitalists. This could easily have happened elsewhere too, with British liberal democracy as a functional example. Who can say?

There are many modern commentators who argue that the US Constitutional system is increasingly becoming an albatross, because it is too hard to change and leads to sclerosis. Legal debates all focus on "what was the intent of the founders" rather than "what is a rational policy for us to have today". A constitutional focus has the risk of making everything backward looking rather than forward looking.
[Obviously, this is also sometimes an advantage.]

But no argument from me on huge impact.

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The constitution is what keeps the mob in check. Plain democracy is an unworkable system. Far from being an albatross the constitution protects us from adopting every latest political and social trend that becomes popular in the international community. If that means we seem "behind the times" in some social aspects every once in a while, it's a small price to pay. Besides, American government is dominated by clever and manipulative lawyers, it can find a way to get where it wants to go in spite of the constitution....it just takes a little bit longer to get there.

The constitution is what keeps the mob in check. Plain democracy is an unworkable system.

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Please demonstrate to me how the mob is rampaging wild in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the many other liberal democracies that do not have a formal written constitution, and that these places suffer from it.

Far from being an albatross the constitution protects us from adopting every latest political and social trend that becomes popular in the international community. If that means we seem "behind the times" in some social aspects every once in a while, it's a small price to pay.

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You'll note that you quoted me as saying "Obviously, this is sometimes an advantage". Yes, there are some advantages to legislative inertia particularly in a large country. But there are very large costs as well.

Besides, American government is dominated by clever and manipulative lawyers, it can find a way to get where it wants to go in spite of the constitution....it just takes a little bit longer to get there.

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Hardly. The US gets stuck where it is because of how out-dated historical reasons. The Electoral College makes little sense in a modern setting (why should the votes of only a few swing-staters really matter?), as does the over-representation of small states in the Senate. But its basically impossible to change them because of the constitution, and because amendments require massive super-majorities (and a number of states - so the power of small states is permanently entrenched).

Key policy debates (like "should we let people walk around in public with handguns" or "should we allow or ban women from getting abortions" or "should we do something to reduce corporate power in politics") are derailed and turned into constitutional debates about what the "founder's intent" was in their militia formation amendment, whether or not the constitution allows a right to privacy, or whether the constitution endows corporations with unlimited free speech.
I'm not saying that a democracy has to be one way or the other on these issues, but these should be policy debates on their merits and on the will of the people today, not just on what some guys 230 years ago might have intended.

But I take your point, in that ways around constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishments (torture, for example) and rights to an attorney have been waived by people when they wish them.

Ahriman said:

Please demonstrate to me how the mob is rampaging wild in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the many other liberal democracies that do not have a formal written constitution, and that these places suffer from it.


You'll note that you quoted me as saying "Obviously, this is sometimes an advantage". Yes, there are some advantages to legislative inertia particularly in a large country. But there are very large costs as well.


Hardly. The US gets stuck where it is because of how out-dated historical reasons. The Electoral College makes little sense in a modern setting (why should the votes of only a few swing-staters really matter?), as does the over-representation of small states in the Senate. But its basically impossible to change them because of the constitution, and because amendments require massive super-majorities (and a number of states - so the power of small states is permanently entrenched).

Key policy debates (like "should we let people walk around in public with handguns" or "should we allow or ban women from getting abortions" or "should we do something to reduce corporate power in politics") are derailed and turned into constitutional debates about what the "founder's intent" was in their militia formation amendment, whether or not the constitution allows a right to privacy, or whether the constitution endows corporations with unlimited free speech.
I'm not saying that a democracy has to be one way or the other on these issues, but these should be policy debates on their merits and on the will of the people today, not just on what some guys 230 years ago might have intended.

But I take your point, in that ways around constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishments (torture, for example) and rights to an attorney have been waived by people when they wish them.

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You are essentially dismissing as rather insignificant one of the major aspects of America's national identity and then getting bent out of shape when an American dares to challenge you on it. As far as the electoral college and state representation is concerned, that goes to the core of the relationship that our states and federal government have with each other. Each state is an individual entity and our arrangement allows for each of these entities to have equal say in the senate, and sometimes disproportionate say in the election of the president. If that were not the case, then a few select regions would essentially dominate our national politics. The Northeast and Southwest coasts, for example, would pretty much decide the political fate of the other regions of the country. These are heavily urban dominated regions that might not adequately reflect the needs and requirements of other regions of our country. Our country is vast and varied and in order to maintain its cohesiveness certain allowances have had to be made that would not be necessary in nations encompassing smaller regions, smaller populations and/or with less ethnic and cultural diversity.

When I speak of the mob I am not talking about riots in the street, I am talking about the ability of the short term trends and whims of the mob(group think) to dictate social policy. The majority does not have total power, it must be kept in check by the limits imposed upon it by the constitution. We are able to change but when it comes to the international trends of the "liberal democracies" we get to play catch up, instead of blindly following down the identical path without seeing what lies in wait for us at the end of it. In order to get more specific than that I'd have to change the subject to one of political ideologies and I'm not trying to do that.....I'm trying to stick to the significance of the constitution. Your talk about outdated notions of the American founders leads me to believe you'd rather get into ideological specifics, but I'd rather not go there. I've been in enough of those discussions to know where they lead. One can argue the merits of all sorts of approaches to law and policy that would violate the rights of the people as outlined by our constitution, and perhaps many of them would work, and work well, but would violate the principles of our nation that do not become invalid simply because a new generation has been charmed into believing them to be quaint. The United States of America is not just another carbon copy of the liberal democracies of the world. In some ways it is something different, and even though our nation is far from perfect our system has worked out pretty well for us so far.

I realize this is not the direction the author of this thread wanted this thread to go in. These types of threads almost always end up this way though....don't they?

phungus420 said:

[sarcasm]It's not like the constitution of the United States hasn't had a direct impact on political theory, which has had global reprecussions still felt to this day, not at all[/sarcasm]

I don't think you understand just how radical a concept a written constitution ratified by the citizens of a state and formalizing the political ideology of "Consent of the Governed" was. And you certainly don't comprehend what an impact this has had on history and global politics.

Also small player before 1942? The automobile, the Airplane, the Telephone, the Television.... What about the Spanish-American War, do you really think this had little impact on the globe? Or what about opening up Japan, you really think the history of the world wouldn't have been drastically altered had Commodore Perry not forced Japan's hand to opening up to the west (such a historical turn would have meant not Meiji reformation for instance).

Sorry but to claim the US hasn't had a profound impact on global history shows either ignorance, or bias; both of which don't square with the facts.

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OK I'll give you that, but I think you overrate the importance of the Spanish American war. I believe the Mexican war had more of a territorial exchange. But neither country involved had large numbers of military and there weren't very many big battles.

But perhaps I'm thinking too much in military terms. As you said the constitution was a big deal at the time (though no one seems to care about it much now )

I'll ignore the intentionally inflammatory nature of your last paragraph

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Its the only offhand example I can think of *your* point - that clever and manipulative legislators can get around the constitution if they wish.
If you don't like it, can you please demonstrate some other examples? Otherwise I don't really know what you mean. The only congressional prohibitions I can easily think of that have been avoided are things like internment of Japanese or torture.

I appreciate your point that its better to talk about issues in the abstract rather than derail into partisan debates - but its difficult to discuss issues without examples.

When I speak of the mob I am not talking about riots in the street, I am talking about the ability of the short term trends and whims of the mob(group think) to dictate social policy. The majority does not have total power, it must be kept in check by the limits imposed upon it by the constitution.

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Once again, please show me how other modern liberal democracies are unable to prevent themselves from succumbing to the mob, in whatever definition you like, or how they are "unworkable systems" (your words!). I didn't realize that Canada or Australia were governed based on short-term whims.
Please, tell me how *your* form of democracy is intrinsically superior to those of any other countries that do not work the same way.

You are essentially dismissing as rather insignificant one of the major aspects of America's national identity

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How so? Having a constitution has advantages, it has disadvantages, I'm happy to concede both.

Does the American system work? Sure, mostly. Is it the *only* way to do things?
Is "The constitution is what keeps the mob in check. Plain democracy is an unworkable system." really true? I think not.
So who's being inflammatory?

If that were not the case, then a few select regions would essentially dominate our national politics.

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How terrible the idea that places *where the people live* matter more than places where they don't. Why do voters living in New Hampshire get more effective say in the outcome of the presidencies than those living in Texas? Why do voters in Colorado get more say than those living in California or New York? If you live in a non-swing state, your vote doesn't really matter much.

But that is missing the real point at hand. If people voted today on how they wanted the president selected, they wouldnt' pick the electoral college - I think a majority of people would prefer to have a directly elected president (most votes wins! very simple). But that's not possible, because its too hard to change the constitution.

Similarly for the other examples. The population as a whole should be able to decide whether or not they think people should be able to have assault rifles. That should be the discussion, instead of what was intended by the founders in the second amendment.

A huge majority favors some limits on corporate spending on political campaigns. But laws that say that get overturned, based on interpretations of What the Founders Intended.

Its not up to me to decide how small states should be represented or not, or which guns people should have, or how political spending limits should work. But it should be up to current Americans, not to Americans ~230 years ago.

And its just too hard to change the constitution. The last amendent was fairly minor (congressional pay rises must be voted on - 1992) and the one before that was 1973 (voting age to 18).

realize this is not the direction the author of this thread wanted this thread to go in. These types of threads almost always end up this way though....don't they?

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Yeah, but these are more fun. Its not like we really get to pick which Civs show up in the game.

I'm kind of sick of seeing the Inca in, but I have a feeling they will always be in Civ games. I like to play Earth map alot, and it sucks to see them pretty much useless the entire game. Just finished up a civ4 earth map (18 civ one), the only purpose they serve is to be vassalized by the aztecs.

But on random maps it makes no difference, and I understand they need to get some native american representation.

I like to play Earth map alot, and it sucks to see them pretty much useless the entire game. Just finished up a civ4 earth map (18 civ one), the only purpose they serve is to be vassalized by the aztecs.

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This suggests a map design failure to me. A good map should give them enough bonus resources to be competitive.

Let them have sheep (llamas)! And gold mines!

Ahriman said:

Please demonstrate to me how the mob is rampaging wild in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the many other liberal democracies that do not have a formal written constitution, and that these places suffer from it.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Reform_Act_2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Zealand

Fail.

Alezander01 said:

You are incorrect here. The Mayans were in both Civ3: Conquests and Civ4: Beyond the Sword.

It's not overkill to have all three, because the Americas are underrepresented as it is. In fact, I would say that that the Mayans are more "civworthy" than either the Aztecs or Incans in both their accomplishments and longevity (not to say that Aztecs and Incans shouldn't be in because of that, however).

Anyway, I get the feeling that this thread and poll might have been better served by being two polls; one for which civs you want to come back that have already been in Civ, and one for which new civs you want. As it is, the voting is skewed in favor of the civs that most people are familiar with, the favorite ones they've played with in BtS already. It was a good idea in principle though. Thanks for the name recognition too.

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Then there is an actual mistake in my poll. Sorry for not adding the Maya! And I still regret Polynesia.

And yes, splitting it into two polls would have been a wise idea! Maybe I'll do that in summer, now people would only be bored by another poll.

Cool that you gave your overall approval, although the "have already been in Civ" bias is obvious. Guess you know always better afterwards...

Fail.

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No, not at all. These are not explicit written constitutions.

A bunch of separate Acts, that can be repealed with a simple majority vote the same as any other law, is not a Constitution in the generally accepted sense.

Did you read the pages before you linked to them?

"Canada; the country's constitution is an amalgamation of codified acts and uncodified traditions and conventions"

"The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or completely entrenched"

Australia I'll withdraw as an example, I don't know enough about the details, but Canada, New Zealand and UK I will retain. These are *not* governed by a single supreme law constitution, in the manner of the United States.

Ahriman said:

No, not at all. These are not explicit written constitutions.

A bunch of separate Acts, that can be repealed with a simple majority vote the same as any other law, is not a Constitution in the generally accepted sense.

Did you read the pages before you linked to them?

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Does anyone when given the chance to prove someone wrong?

"Canada; the country's constitution is an amalgamation of codified acts and uncodified traditions and conventions"

"The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or completely entrenched"

Australia I'll withdraw as an example, I don't know enough about the details, but Canada, New Zealand and UK I will retain. These are *not* governed by a single supreme law constitution, in the manner of the United States.

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The Constitution of Australia is a single supreme document which codifies and formalises our Constitution. This is in the same manner as USA.

The Canadian Constitution Act of 1982 codifies and formalises the Canadian Constitution and is a single supreme document outlining what Acts/Amendments make up the Constitution. "According to Section 52 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the Constitution of Canada is the "supreme law of Canada", and any law inconsistent with it is of no force or effect." Section 52(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 defines the “Constitution of Canada.”

I withdraw New Zealand and UK. But it should be noted that it states there is only three countries in the World that do not have a single supreme document (constitutional single document) codifying and formalising law, that being the UK, New Zealand and Israel. Though one could argue the English Constitution Reform Act does this.