Ethnies and population

[luca 83]

What is a population? Take for example the Sicilians are a mixture of Sicilians, Carthaginian Greeks , Romans , Arabs , Normans , Goths, Spaniards , Austrians , therefore , it makes no sense , starting with a starting population , such as Romans , or English, and better if you choose as l a technology attributes or outline. Over time

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'd love for ethnic diversity in civs. But you have to start somewhere such as Rome being primarily comprised of Romans and England being primarily English. Factors in game such as immigration and war/conquest would change the world as the game goes along.

 

[notNamed]

I'd love for ethnic diversity in civs. But you have to start somewhere such as Rome being primarily comprised of Romans and England being primarily English. Factors in game such as immigration and war/conquest would change the world as the game goes along.

Romans are a good example, since being Roman was extremely well defined as people who literally live in the city and nobody else. And then started expanding to include the Roman settlers, then the Latin allies, etc.
But English itself is a name devised to blanket different people groups together for purely political goals.

Ultimately, though, modeling ethnicities is already an extremely complicated topic that no game's done successfully before and Civ7 is very unlikely to tackle.
Couple that with the fact that you're dealing with Civ's fantasy of Stone Age Lincoln and that any serious take on this would require ethnicities to shift and change with the ages, and it should be a safe omission from new mechanic candidates.

 

[pokiehl]

There’s no need to model ethnicity or race population mechanics. That would be a silly path for any game to go down.

Instead, “Cultural Group” and “Religion” broadly would do plenty to expand the depth of population mechanics. Cultural Group could simply be reflective of the individual civs in the game, and Religion would obviously be tied to the religion founded by each civ. This streamlines the idea of what you’re trying to get across.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Ultimately, though, modeling ethnicities is already an extremely complicated topic that no game's done successfully before and Civ7 is very unlikely to tackle.
Couple that with the fact that you're dealing with Civ's fantasy of Stone Age Lincoln and that any serious take on this would require ethnicities to shift and change with the ages, and it should be a safe omission from new mechanic candidates.

I guess I should clarify that when I mention having "ethnicities" I mean something similar to what I believe they had in earlier games which was nationality.
In my scenario any citizen born in any French city, early game, would be considered French. If another civilization would happen to conquer any French cities, they have a chance to produce new citizens of their nationality/ethnicity.
Even though it's part of another civilization, as long as the majority population was originally French, they still would still retain much of their original French identity. Late game, if the French do not take back the city, it would possibly attract more French international tourists.

 

[Patine]

Romans are a good example, since being Roman was extremely well defined as people who literally live in the city and nobody else. And then started expanding to include the Roman settlers, then the Latin allies, etc.
But English itself is a name devised to blanket different people groups together for purely political goals.

Until, of course, later on Roman CITIZENSHIP starting being granted to conquered peoples, which by that point, as indistinguable from the 12 tribu and it's genes, especially when the mechanism of adoption of adult men was used with impunity.

 

[luca 83]

They were Romans until the fall of Rome: then they became Goths, Byzantine Lombards, then Milanese, Florentines etc. changed over time

 

[Patine]

They were Romans until the fall of Rome: then they became Goths, Byzantine Lombards, then Milanese, Florentines etc. changed over time

Though I can't see how such fine-grained ethnic differences would at all benefit a game like Civ.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Use a term like "Ethnicity" could be problematic so I think a good option would be "Heritage" to represent the ethnocultural identity of population units. Also Heritage instead of "Culture" since culture is already a concept by itself in CIV.
Apart of the controversial implications of ethincity it also make sense to focus in the cultural aspect because culture can spread, influence, merge, be assimilated and integrated in an easier way than genetics.

At least CIV4 already had a system were each civ have their culture that could be expanded to other cities, so would be great to see something like that again. By the way with population as a central mechanic Heritage(ethnocultural) open the chance for more bonuses and uniques in the form of Traditions. Each civ main/playable or minor/non-playable start with their own Heritage that include a Tradition, each of these traditions take form of unique units, buildings, resources or direct bonuses. This is already quite useful for the design of civs getting a secondary bonus or unique of a specifc type, and for minor non-playable civs to gain some flavor and value.

Now, whether it's by conquest or migration when a civ achieve to have certain percentage of population of a different Heritage, and that population have a minimum level of happiness/loyalty, then they can became an acepted culture and provide you of their Tradition including bonuses and uniques. To balance this the number of posible acepted cultures should be a small of possible slots (2,3,4?) determined by your ideologies/civics/policies related to cultural tolerance rights.
So this way we have not only some representation of different cultures, but also a gameplay thematic mechanic to exploit to gain bonuses and uniques for our civ.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I guess I should clarify that when I mention having "ethnicities" I mean something similar to what I believe they had in earlier games which was nationality.
In my scenario any citizen born in any French city, early game, would be considered French. If another civilization would happen to conquer any French cities, they have a chance to produce new citizens of their nationality/ethnicity.
Even though it's part of another civilization, as long as the majority population was originally French, they still would still retain much of their original French identity. Late game, if the French do not take back the city, it would possibly attract more French international tourists.

Civ3 had this. It worked well. Depending on how much more advanced your culture was you would slowly assimilate a captured city’s population, or the opposite could happen as well.

 

[Patine]

Civ3 had this. It worked well. Depending on how much more advanced your culture was you would slowly assimilate a captured city’s population, or the opposite could happen as well.

Yes, the system was carried over, as an idea, from MoO2 and SMAC, but, "ethnicity," didn't go beyond the civ that owned the city before conquest and the one that conquered it, as solid blocs. I believe there's some more fine-grained details being proposed here, as to what is meant as, "ethnicities," and how they mechanically relate., even if I'm not fully on board with.

 

[Ordnael]

I want to keep playing Civ instead of playing some form of SimCiv. We at CFC throw some great ideas around about how to improve Civ, but some of them conjugated together would make a game I wouldn't want to play at all. Throw me some (manageable) micromanagement gimmicks that might be fun and I am OK with them, like choosing in which city to place a certain luxury industry in a way I can make the most of my available luxury resources and place as much industries as possible. Make me juggle affirmative action for different ethnicities, or "genders", for colleges in each city and what detriments in science production may it entail and I go play tick tack toe with a cat

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yes, the system was carried over, as an idea, from MoO2 and SMAC, but, "ethnicity," didn't go beyond the civ that owned the city before conquest and the one that conquered it, as solid blocs. I believe there's some more fine-grained details being proposed here, as to what is meant as, "ethnicities," and how they mechanically relate., even if I'm not fully on board with.

Ideally, I would want it to essentially be a better loyalty system than the current one we have where border cities rebelling because of population sizes. I don't necessarily want it to be overcomplicated or exactly like the OP wants.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

There’s no need to model ethnicity or race population mechanics. That would be a silly path for any game to go down.

Instead, “Cultural Group” and “Religion” broadly would do plenty to expand the depth of population mechanics. Cultural Group could simply be reflective of the individual civs in the game, and Religion would obviously be tied to the religion founded by each civ. This streamlines the idea of what you’re trying to get across.

Not to mention that it would mean racism would exist as an in-world game mechanic the player can engage with. Not saying there's never a place for that, just not in any game played from a top-down perspective, as that could risk attracting a large crowd of racists to live out their racist fantasies

 

[Patine]

Not to mention that it would mean racism would exist as an in-world game mechanic the player can engage with. Not saying there's never a place for that, just not in any game played from a top-down perspective, as that could risk attracting a large crowd of racists to live out their racist fantasies

Indeed, up to, and including, potentially ethnic, "job opportunity strata," segregation/appartheid, ethnic cleansing, miscogenation laws, collective punishment, "Babtustans," and reservations, and, "stab in th back myths," and their reactions. Yes, not a good idea.

 

[pokiehl]

what does “job opportunity strata” mean?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Indeed, up to, and including, potentially ethnic, "job opportunity strata," segregation/appartheid, ethnic cleansing, miscogenation laws, collective punishment, "Babtustans," and reservations, and, "stab in th back myths," and their reactions. Yes, not a good idea.

However, I don't think it's a topic to be completely ignored either. At the very least, make regular allusions to systemic discrimination, given how large role it, and more importantly, the fights against it, has played in modern history (and most likely will continue to longer after both of us are dead). Probably the best route is to have racism be depicted as an unequivocally negative mechanic, and without any references to anything specific

 

[pokiehl]

Probably the best route is to have racism be depicted as an unequivocally negative mechanic,

The best route, unequivocally, is to not depict or model racism or race in general.

The game isn’t that granular and impact on world history is not a good justification. Sexism, religious discrimination, child slavery or any untold number of crimes against humanity are also a part of world history but we don’t need to see them in Civ. Same thing with this.

I don’t mean this offensively, but with some of the ideas I see here posited in the name of “realism” (“depict racism; depict atrocities and war crimes; show the dog in the scout model getting pummeled instead of letting it run away”), some of you guys are just begging for this series to lose the majority of its popularity and market share and be relegated to some low-budget niche enthusiast game for weirdos.

 

[BuchiTaton]

So I guess people here is in favor to remove CIV's traditional depiction of "barbarians" and the ability to raze cities because those are pretty much genocide gameplay mechanics.

 

[BuchiTaton]

That’s not the same at all. If you’re considering those to be references to genocide, then you can just as well consider them to be the racism references that you want for some reason and be satisfied.

Sorry. What racist reference I am supposed to want?