Updated again: Thanks Genghis Kai for the, almost certainly, final civ list.
We appreciate everyone's help a great deal, but please, no further suggestions for changes unless you are personally working on the map.
The updated list (53 civs):
Nation (includes)
European Union (EU excluding UK)
United Kingdom (Jamaica, Belize, Bahamas, Trinidad)
Norway
Russia
Belarus
Ukraine
Turkey
Georgia
Morocco
Algeria (Tunisia)
Egypt
Sudan
Ethiopia
West African States (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo.)
Nigeria (Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone)
Central African States (
Cameroon, São Tomé, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon)
Angola (DR Congo)
South Africa (
Botswana and Namibia)
East African States (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi)
Saudi Arabia
Israel
Palestine
Syria
Iran
Pakistan
Bangladesh
India
Kazakhstan
Mongolia
China
Taiwan
North Korea
South Korea
Japan
Myanmar
Thailand
Vietnam
Philippines
Indonesia
Australia (Papul New Guinea and some pacific islands)
New Zealand (some pacific islands)
Canada
United States (Iraq, Afghanistan)
Mexico
Colombia
Bolivarian Americas (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua)
Peru
Brazil
Argentina
Chile
Neutral States (Switzerland, Turkmenistan and Costa Rica)
Minor States (Iceland, Croatia, Albania, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Libya, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Madagascar, Seychelles, Lebanon, Jordon, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Yemen, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Haiti, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay)
Failed States (Mauritania, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, part of Mali, part of Niger, Central African Republic, Chad, part of DR Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, Darfur, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, East Timor)
I have SERIOUS issues with this Civ list.
Firstly Europe:
1) The UK is a member of the EU. I know that it was excluded on the grounds of it being involved in the Iraq war indicating it has "its own foreign policy" - as if the other 26 countries don't (surely we should be judging by the actual powers that each country has rather than the powers they use). ANY of the EU countries (aside from countries like Sweden and Ireland which are militarily neutral) could have done the same thing. Indeed, 15 of the current 27 members of the EU were members of the "coalition of the willing" and 3 of these contributed troops to the invasion itself. If you go by the 2003 membership of the EU then 6 of the the (I think) 15 members were in the coalition and even with that membership the UK wasn't the only EU country involved in the invasion.
Basically, it's an arbitrary decision to remove it - all of the countries have their own foreign policy as well as, to some extent, the organisation itself (for instance, though the commission recognises the independence of Kosovo about 1/3 of the member states do not and the response to the Georgia war last year also varied significantly among the countries). The EU's involvement in the Iran nuclear talks was through France, Germany and UK - not the EU itself.
In addition national foreign relations affect the relations of the EU itself far more than the other way around - China's relationship with the EU soured slightly for a while when Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama, Iran started making anti-EU speeches when the UK (not the EU itself) expelled Iranian diplomats recently.
Long story short, there's nothing exceptional about the UK in terms of actual powers with regards to the EU. Most of the media is incredibly europhobic and a result a lot of British people are too (to an extreme that you don't find even in the other more eurosceptic EU countries like Sweden or Denmark) but the UK isn't really a special case in any way in terms of real powers. Nor is it necessarily ideologically hugely distinct as federalism isn't really that big a force in the EU any more.
2) The EU is not a country - I realise that it's probably too much like a country now to just neglect it and include the major EU countries on their own but it's hardly a United States of Europe at the moment. I suspect that even if you exclude the UK from the EU on this map that the EU will end up ludicrously overpowered. As it would be if you looked at its real world GDP, military strength etc. (even Olympic medals) and imagined it was one country. I suspect that you'll have to alter the world map a lot to get it so that the EU isn't much more powerful than the USA, China, India or Russia.
3) Minor states and neutral states.
a) The Serbs invaded Croatia, one of the places where they invaded was a UNESCO world heritage site and another one of the places is still in ruins fifteen years later, about twenty years ago and only stopped attacking Croatia fifteen years ago - there was ethnic cleansing on both sides. The general (also war criminal, incidentally) Ante Gotovina is hero worshipped there because of his victories against the Serb Krajinka and the Republic Sprska, despite his dubious methods. You can get a bus to any country in the former Yugoslavia except Serbia, even to FYR Macedonia which would require driving through Serbia. Not to labour the point, but I don't think it's appropriate to lump them together.
b) Croatia will join the EU next year or the year after, provided it can resolve a border dispute with Slovenia. Tajikistan won't (though kudos for fitting it on the map).
c) Iceland is hardly similar to Libya, they shouldn't be in the same Civ.
d) Switzerland has quite extensive ties to the EU - it's de facto part of the EEA (it has bilateral treaties that approximate it) and it's part of the Schengen passport region. Okay, it IS neutral but its diplomatic and economic ties are quite different to those of Costa Rica or Turkmenistan.
e) In Switzerland a citizen can call a referendum on something if he or she gets enough signatories - it is probably the most democratic country in the world by a long margin. In Turkmenistan opposition politicians are lobotomised on a semi-regular basis. What civics should this civ have?
4) Norway. Norway is more deeply involved in EU projects than some actual EU states - it's part of the Schengen region, it's involved in the EU battlegroups, the WEU etc. It's a bit of a case of a rock and a hard place as giving it its own civ is pretty inaccurate but so is lumping it in with the EU. I think it might be better to make an EFTA civ and put it in permanent alliance with the EU civ.
Africa:
1) Libya is not a minor state, at least not in the African sphere. Gadaffi actually has a lot of weight in the African Union - he's called for a United States of Africa (despite it clearly not being the time for that, if there ever is a time for it) and the other heads of state aren't actually just ignoring him. Which suggests real power.
2) Sudan may split into two states in 2011 (South Sudan has home rule and can vote for independence in 2011) - it might be difficult to portray this without adding a South Sudan civ as a vassal.
3) Nigeria - I'm not sure that putting Liberia and Sierra Leone in the same civ is a good idea. For similar reasons to why I don't think Croatia and Serbia should be in the same civ - namely, recent wars.
4) I'm a bit anxious about the idea of shoving DR Congo and Angola in the same civ (particularly if it's called Angola). Also, isn't DR Congo in civil war atm?
Asia:
1) It seems odd to have the Gulf states in minor states rather than just lumping them in with Saudi Arabia and calling them "Arabian states". I realise they're not a monolithic block but surely Yemen, Brunei etc have more in common with Saudi Arabia than with Iceland, Singapore or Madagascar?
2) How are you going to get Taiwan's diplomacy to work? It's not an internationally recognised country as the PRC claims sovereignty over it.
3) Syria's got troops in Lebanon. That'll be pretty hard to represent even if Lebanon wasn't in the "minor states" civ.
I also think that minor states and failed states (to a lesser extent neutral states too) are bad ideas.
Firstly, there's no connection between these states - it'd be better to lump together nearby states (provided that they aren't at war with each other of course) than to give a random list of places scattered across the world a civ.
Secondly, the divisions seem arbitrary. Why are Libya, Singapore or UAE deemed minor states for instance? Why is Turkmenistan a neutral state rather than a failed state (it's no more or less a failed state than Uzbekistan imo)? You could call it either. Why aren't DR Congo or DPRK failed states (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state)? Why is Lebanon a minor state whereas Palestine has its own civ? South America'd be a bit of a mess given this.
Thirdly, if you played well enough you could probably make the minor/failed states civ a significant player given the game mechanics of Civ IV. Or you can play as the neutral states and not be neutral. Oxymoron, anyone?
Fourthly, this map ignores unrecognised countries (except for Palestine and Taiwan). Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria or the more famous South Ossetia and Abhkazia aren't on the map. In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh or Transnistria not all of the countries involved are even on the map (there's no Armenia and no Moldova). The Tamil state doesn't exist any more and would be impossible to portray without quadrupling the size of the world map so that's okay but Somaliland isn't on this map either, even though there's definitely room on most world maps for it. Given that these are actually potentially quite significant (as the events of last year show) I think there's a bit of an oversight here.
Apologies for length and any unintentional rudeness.
EDIT: Another Europe one. Northern Ireland can't be represented at all, even though it's been quite significant over the last thirty years or so...