India

[bene_legionary]

Yunnan became more and more sinicised in after the 15th century. Before it was independently settled by non-Chinese people. Before the messes of the 19th and 20th century there was a large Muslim population too, but I remember reading about them being rounded up during all of the civil wars and rebellions going on, unfortunately. If there had to be a civ from this region, Dali is a good pick. They defeated Imperial armies from the Song (I think?) and expanded down to Vietnam and Guangxi a couple of times. But they would make a better city state. I think the Yuan, Ming and then the Qing eventually gobbled them up.

Personally I wouldn't mind more Indian civs. But I'm against any civilisation that could only have one notable leader, because that would mean the civilisation was only briefly an important state. The Timurids might be interesting, but even if they brought a renaissance to Persia they did not last much longer than Timur himself. However Ahmadnagar seems to be only notable because it happened to have someone from Ethiopia leading it. Personally I'm not sure that's a good representation of India. That's not to say Bactrians in central Asia from Greece is bad, though.

Sorry, Dali came after Nanzhong, who were the ones defeating Imperial Tang armies. Dali was more peaceful, it seems.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yes, that is the case at least for now & I don't see it changing very rapidly anytime soon. Yet with expanding market & demand in Asia, I do think we might see increase in representation of these regions gradually, may be by civ 8 .

As much as an Hellenophile as I am, I wouldn't mind cutting Macedon to add in the Mughals, as long as Alexander goes back to Greece.

Will still Alexander of Greece and Shaka Zulu as iconic member of the series who never was out.

Genghis Khan also has never been left out.

Despite I'm against debloobing of China, I was curious now, why do you think Yunnan and Xinjiang can be a separete civ?
If I would choice some provinces of China to be a separete civ I would choice Tibet or Uyghurs.

I think most people who are against the deblobbing of China, including me, also would want Tibet as a separate civ. I've also never seen adding Tibet as a separate civ deblobbing China anyways considering Tibet wasn't part of China until the Yuan Dynasty under the Mongols, and then not again until the Qing.

 

[FishFishFish]

Maybe if they named one civ after a Han Chinese dynasty and another Civ "Qing" or "Jin", they could sneak the Manchus into the game without getting it banned in China.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Maybe if they named one civ after a Han Chinese dynasty

I'd settle on at least having a Han dynasty leader, considering we've never had one.

 

[BuchiTaton]

If the modern "One Nation" policy is a problem at least let us have actual variety for India and China leaders like these:
INDIA
- Gandhi (because meme .TM )
- Rajendra Chola

CHINA
- Wu of Han
- Kangxi (great if he speak Manchu)

By the way give each leader their own UU, for real is a shame that world's richiest histories are reduced to just one unit. Specially India with the boring generic elephant (that should be special but not unique unit) and "fast worker"

 

[Henri Christophe]

Specially India with the boring generic elephant

Despite I believe every civ should have elephants since have a resource of it in it's boarders. I don't think generic elephant as boring.
But what is your propose to a less boring elephants?

 

[Evie]

The problem isn't (just) India and China being amalgamation of a lot of different states throughout history (a lot of tags are that), it's them being amalgamation that tend to focus almost exclusively on a handful of periods from history.

Look at Germany which has had five leaders from four different states/dynasties/eras from Civ I onward (Frederick I and II of the Hoenstauffen Holy Roman Empire; Maria Theresa of the Habsburg Empiren Bismarck of the German Empire and Frederick the Great of Prussia). France, the same (Joan of Arc and Catherine de Medicis from Valois dynasty France, Louis XIV from Bourbon dynasty France, Napoléon of the French Empire and De Gaulle of the French (fourth and fifth, and Resistance) Republic. Other than the occasional Austrian independence movement, nobody is seriously arguing for breaking Germany apart, and even less so France, because they do a good job of representing the diverse part of their blob's history.

Even among the less diverse civ, at least England (four leaders, three polities - Tudor England, Victorian England and Modern United Kingdom), or Russia (four leaders, two polities - Romanov Empire and Soviet Union), at least managed to hit the most noted leaders of their respective civ along with the occasional chaff (get lost, Iosef) - Peter and Catherine in Russia, Elizabeth and Victoria in England.

Meanwhile, China got Mao, Mao (and Wu), Mao, Mao (and Qin), Wu and Qin (and Kublai, but the less said the better). Qin deserves the occasional appearance, sure, and Wu actually warrants her turn, but having the Communists, Wu Zhou dynasty and Qin dynasty that represent less than a century out of 2200 years is egregious. No Han, no proper Tang (Zetian formed her own dynasty), no Ming, not even a Qing. No wonder people feel like the Chinese blob is bad at representation. And the same goes for India, or, more accurately the Modern India civ that *occasionally* remember the Maurya empire existed (leader list: Gandhi, Gandhi (and other Gandhi), Gandhi, Gandhi (and Asoka), Gandhi, and Gandhi (and Chandragupta)).

Give the Indians a leader list that goes more like Germany with Gandhi, Asoka, Chandra Gupta (not Chandragupta), Razia Sultana (we need a female name for 2), and Akbar, and we probably aren't even having this thread (we might at most have a thread about the Chola being a separate civ). Give China a leader list that has variously had Qin Shi Huang, Wu of Han, Taizong of Tang, Wu Zetian, Kangxi of Qing, (sign *and* Kublai Khan) and the same is true of China

A good starting step to fixing this would be giving both civs, in VII, two new never-seen-before leaders.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

CHINA
- Wu of Han
- Kangxi (great if he speak Manchu)

These choices along with the possibility of the Yongle Emperor would be great.

Despite I believe every civ should have elephants since have a resource of it in it's boarders. I don't think generic elephant as boring.
But what is your propose to a less boring elephants?

I don't mind India/Maurya having the generic war elephant unit, considering that's where Elephants were first used in warfare. Of course they could also be a leader unit too so that civilization does get something else.

Anyway I have talked about before the possibility of a generic war elephant units being built if you happen only if you have access to an ivory corporation, as that's resource special bonus. And of course an India/Maurya civilization could build their UU without having to own the corporation.

 

[FishFishFish]

The problem isn't (just) India and China being amalgamation of a lot of different states throughout history (a lot of tags are that), it's them being amalgamation that tend to focus almost exclusively on a handful of periods from history.

Look at Germany which has had five leaders from four different states/dynasties/eras from Civ I onward (Frederick I and II of the Hoenstauffen Holy Roman Empire; Maria Theresa of the Habsburg Empiren Bismarck of the German Empire and Frederick the Great of Prussia). France, the same (Joan of Arc and Catherine de Medicis from Valois dynasty France, Louis XIV from Bourbon dynasty France, Napoléon of the French Empire and De Gaulle of the French (fourth and fifth, and Resistance) Republic. Other than the occasional Austrian independence movement, nobody is seriously arguing for breaking Germany apart, and even less so France, because they do a good job of representing the diverse part of their blob's history.

Even among the less diverse civ, at least England (four leaders, three polities - Tudor England, Victorian England and Modern United Kingdom), or Russia (four leaders, two polities - Romanov Empire and Soviet Union), at least managed to hit the most noted leaders of their respective civ along with the occasional chaff (get lost, Iosef) - Peter and Catherine in Russia, Elizabeth and Victoria in England.

Meanwhile, China got Mao, Mao (and Wu), Mao, Mao (and Qin), Wu and Qin (and Kublai, but the less said the better). Qin deserves the occasional appearance, sure, and Wu actually warrants her turn, but having the Communists, Wu Zhou dynasty and Qin dynasty that represent less than a century out of 2200 years is egregious. No Han, no proper Tang (Zetian formed her own dynasty), no Ming, not even a Qing. No wonder people feel like the Chinese blob is bad at representation. And the same goes for India, or, more accurately the Modern India civ that *occasionally* remember the Maurya empire existed (leader list: Gandhi, Gandhi (and other Gandhi), Gandhi, Gandhi (and Asoka), Gandhi, and Gandhi (and Chandragupta)).

Give the Indians a leader list that goes more like Germany with Gandhi, Asoka, Chandra Gupta (not Chandragupta), Razia Sultana (we need a female name for 2), and Akbar, and we probably aren't even having this thread (we might at most have a thread about the Chola being a separate civ). Give China a leader list that has variously had Qin Shi Huang, Wu of Han, Taizong of Tang, Wu Zetian, Kangxi of Qing, (sign *and* Kublai Khan) and the same is true of China

A good starting step to fixing this would be giving both civs, in VII, two new never-seen-before leaders.

Okay, lets take this to the extreme. They keep India at one civ but continuously add more and more Europeans. We get Ireland, Lithuania, Finland and so on... eventually we are going to have 50+ Europeans and 1 Indian civ. At some point it is going to get ridiculous. Are they going to add stuff like Sri Lanka simply because they aren't apart of India today? I think India being deblobed is inevitable, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon but it will happen.

Anyways, for female Indian leaders I'd like to see Ahilyabai Holkar of the Maratha. She is the pioneer of Hindu temple construction and restoration

 

[Evie]

Yeah, uh, I'm against adding more slots for European civs. Any new European civs (except maybe Italy, and I'm not super gung ho on needing Italy) should replace another European civ (eg, if we add Ireland we don't have Scotland in the same game).

And therein lies the rub. A lot of the approaches proposed to breaking up the Indian blob focus on treating separate dynasties, separate states, as separate civilization - but if we start applyign that standard to Europe, the results would be disastrous in terms of how many tags we need. The same standards applied to suggest separate Mughal or Maurya civs would justify having three or four German civilizations in the game, and Wessex and England and Great Britain separate, and so forth.

That's why I say deblobbing should involve geography and broad cultural groupings, not dynasties or historical eras or political organizations (and why I'm firmly against the Macedon/Greece split). Deblobbing is good to an extent, but fragmenting is not.

So I would lean toward keeping one civ representing much of what India currently does, namely, the (largely Hindi and Magadhan speaking) people of the Gangetic plain and the various states and empires that have been based in that region. This would cover the Maurya, Gupta, Delhi and later Mughal empire, and a large chunk of modern India including the capital as well. That civ could retain the name India, or change to Hindi or Gangetic civilization (or some other name I haven't come up with yet).

But - that leaves a lot of modern India that can still be deblobbed, including the whole north-western desert areas, the central plateaus, and maybe most importantly, the entire Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada) south. Splitting off new civilizations from those regions, I can definitely support, and I would even say that I consider adding a civilization from the Dravidian south (whether we make it a Dravidian, Tamil or Telugu civilization can be discussed) something that should be a high priority.

 

[FishFishFish]

I feel like you are acting like the amount of civs in the game is going to be stagnant. Historically as the civilization franchise continues to grow more slots become available which is what I am basing my assumption on. Right now we might only have 60ish civs but in civ 9 we might have over 100. Having one Indian civ represent all of the Gangetic plain's history might be fine right now (I'd still argue it is not) but is it going to be okay when he have double the amount of civs? How about triple? And when they do add more civs but are reluctant to deblob the civs that already exist, where do you expect them to add new civs? My guess would be Europe.

Also why does India need to be compared to Germany or England? India has a much longer recorded history, is way bigger and has more population. I believe that they deserve more because of that. I also think it is a bit strange to be okay with making Italy a separate civ while opposing deblobbing the Gangetic plain. Surely if Italy is different enough from Rome to be considered separate, the Mughals are different enough from Maurya to be considered separate.

 

[Patine]

I feel like you are acting like the amount of civs in the game is going to be stagnant. Historically as the civilization franchise continues to grow more slots become available which is what I am basing my assumption on. Right now we might only have 60ish civs but in civ 9 we might have over 100. Having one Indian civ represent all of the Gangetic plain's history might be fine right now (I'd still argue it is not) but is it going to be okay when he have double the amount of civs? How about triple? And when they do add more civs but are reluctant to deblob the civs that already exist, where do you expect them to add new civs? My guess would be Europe.

Also why does India need to be compared to Germany or England? India has a much longer recorded history, is way bigger and has more population. I believe that they deserve more because of that. I also think it is a bit strange to be okay with making Italy a separate civ while opposing deblobbing the Gangetic plain. Surely if Italy is different enough from Rome to be considered separate, the Mughals are different enough from Maurya to be considered separate.

Yeah, uh, I'm against adding more slots for European civs. Any new European civs (except maybe Italy, and I'm not super gung ho on needing Italy) should replace another European civ (eg, if we add Ireland we don't have Scotland in the same game).

And therein lies the rub. A lot of the approaches proposed to breaking up the Indian blob focus on treating separate dynasties, separate states, as separate civilization - but if we start applyign that standard to Europe, the results would be disastrous in terms of how many tags we need. The same standards applied to suggest separate Mughal or Maurya civs would justify having three or four German civilizations in the game, and Wessex and England and Great Britain separate, and so forth.

That's why I say deblobbing should involve geography and broad cultural groupings, not dynasties or historical eras or political organizations (and why I'm firmly against the Macedon/Greece split). Deblobbing is good to an extent, but fragmenting is not.

So I would lean toward keeping one civ representing much of what India currently does, namely, the (largely Hindi and Magadhan speaking) people of the Gangetic plain and the various states and empires that have been based in that region. This would cover the Maurya, Gupta, Delhi and later Mughal empire, and a large chunk of modern India including the capital as well. That civ could retain the name India, or change to Hindi or Gangetic civilization (or some other name I haven't come up with yet).

But - that leaves a lot of modern India that can still be deblobbed, including the whole north-western desert areas, the central plateaus, and maybe most importantly, the entire Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada) south. Splitting off new civilizations from those regions, I can definitely support, and I would even say that I consider adding a civilization from the Dravidian south (whether we make it a Dravidian, Tamil or Telugu civilization can be discussed) something that should be a high priority.

Back in Civ2, when I started playing, there were 21 civ's, but only 7 could appear in a given game at a time. The number of total civ's in a game has definitely been ratcheting up.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I feel like you are acting like the amount of civs in the game is going to be stagnant. Historically as the civilization franchise continues to grow more slots become available which is what I am basing my assumption on. Right now we might only have 60ish civs but in civ 9 we might have over 100. Having one Indian civ represent all of the Gangetic plain's history might be fine right now (I'd still argue it is not) but is it going to be okay when he have double the amount of civs? How about triple? And when they do add more civs but are reluctant to deblob the civs that already exist, where do you expect them to add new civs? My guess would be Europe.

I think it will eventually reach a point where it will end up being stagnant, but probably not for Civ 7. I don't ever expect to see 100 different civs. Civ 6 ended with 50 and I fully expect civ 7 to at least go up to 54, maybe even reaching 60, but that's a stretch. If not I'm sure Civ 8 would reach 60 civs and I think that might be the tipping point. Any more than that it would feel like designing each individual civ will make them feel less unique than they would be in previous games, mainly 5 and 6.

The only reason I believe we are having this problem I believe is because Gandhi always recurs as a leader.

If Gandhi continues to appear as a leader in the game, it only makes sense that they continue to call the civ India, or at least keep a civ called India.

If Gandhi doesn't appear then that would definitely open more doors to call it by a different name. That being said I would fully expect them to have one, and possibly even rotate between a Maurya/Gupta/Mughal civ regardless, instead of making 3 or 4 separate civs, let alone even having 2. The other option would be to have a civ called India and have one breakaway state: Mughals or Chola seems the most likely as their influence reaches farther away from the Indian subcontinent.

 

[Evie]

On average, there have been about 7 new civilization spots added with each sewuel (36 total, from 14 in civ 1 to 50 in civ 6, over the course of five sequels). On the flip side, it's been six years since Civ 6 came out and Civ VII is not announced yet, so we can probably expect at least seven years between games in the future.

At that rate, and considering that it takes a few years of expansions before a new civ game has all its civs, it's going to be sometimes in the life cycle of Civ XIV, released around 2072, before the numner of civs double from the current 50 and we hit triple digits civs. Many of the posters here are going to be dead or no longer playing computer games, likewise the devs who might read this thread, and we don't even know computer games as we know them will still exist then. Designing civ lists that far into the future is pure pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

So you'll forgive me for focusing on the next decade or so, where we're only likely to see maybe 10-ish new civs (remember, most Civ VIII new civs will be in expansions during the 2030s), and where we still have a LOT of underrepresented areas in the world. That makes new civ spots a very scarce resource, so fragmenting civilizations left and right is nonsense.

As for Italy, unfortunately, due to cultural perceptions and PR, and especially thanks to 1500 years of every last Western civilization being absolutely obsessed with the Roman Empire, you can't have a game called Civilization without a Civ called the Romans in it, and you can't have that Civ be anything else other than Ancient Rome and only Ancient Rome. It can't even include the Byzantine Empire, because western cultures have spent the past 1500 years trying very hard to pretend the only true Roman empire ceased to exist in the 400s AD and the Eastern Roman Empire was just a bunch of Greek impostors. So we have to have Rome, it can't represent anything after the fall of the city of Rome, and that leaves 1500 years of Italian history including the Italian renaissance completely unrepresented.

That's why I can tolerate Italy being added - because it's not currently part of any existing blob.

 

[FishFishFish]

On average, there have been about 7 new civilization spots added with each sewuel

The mean of a nonlinear function of several variables does not equal the function of the means of those variables.

For instance Civ 3 added 10 civs. Civ 4 only added 3 but also had a whopping 52 total leaders.

On the flip side, it's been six years since Civ 6 came out and Civ VII is not announced yet, so we can probably expect at least seven years between games in the future.

Covid probably means production was slower. That's hardly indicative.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I find the prospect of deblobbing England, France, and Germany to be rather interesting. How would the resulting states, such as Wessex, compare with the Mauryan-Mughal-Chola trio?

There appears to be a problem with scale accompanied by a double standard. It may be informative to consider a quasi-absurd case where instead of comparing India to England, France, and Germany, we could compare it to Western civilization at large. Doing so would reveal, for instance, that many of the approaches in support of or against the Mughals have already been applied to Europe, only in the West's favor. I suspect it is less productive to ask if we ought to include Wessex or the Mughals, rather than whether either the Mughals or England should be in the game in the first place.

If we reapplied the standards of historical eras, geography, cultures, and states to the current roster, a plausible explanation for any residual European overrepresentation would be prestige/legacy slots catering to particular markets. Though commercial factors are undeniable, they should not obscure the question of salience among the remaining candidates.

Deblobbing seems quite distinct in my mind from fragmentation. To some extent, France is a blob, just not on the scale of India and Arabia. Fundamentally, European cultures should not be privileged over the achievements of people throughout history and the world. To this end, I would advocate for expanding India's representation through factions rather than solely through leaders.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Covid probably means production was slower. That's hardly indicative.

I don't know if Covid had anything to really do with it. Covid really only hit during the development/release of the NFP, which I still believe we would get more content anyways.

There appears to be a problem with scale accompanied by a double standard. It may be informative to consider a quasi-absurd case where instead of comparing India to England, France, and Germany, we could compare it to Western civilization at large. Doing so would reveal, for instance, that many of the approaches in support of or against the Mughals have already been applied to Europe, only in the West's favor. I suspect it is less productive to ask if we ought to include Wessex or the Mughals, rather than whether either the Mughals or England should be in the game in the first place.

It is an interesting question because I feel like Wessex/Anglo-Saxons could be part of England, at least under Alfred the Great, but I know there are others that think otherwise. On the flipside I think that Mughals are really the only group that could fit outside of an Indian blob, similar to how Macedon was separate from Greece.

Deblobbing seems quite distinct in my mind from fragmentation. To some extent, France is a blob, just not on the scale of India and Arabia. Fundamentally, European cultures should not be privileged over the achievements of people throughout history and the world. To this end, I would advocate for expanding India's representation through factions rather than solely through leaders.

Interesting enough I don't find Arabia or China personally to be on the same scale as India, considering there has always kind of been sort of unity through the various dynasties or the Medieval caliphates. Also I consider Northern Africa/Maghreb region distinct enough that there could be another civ there like we have with Morocco or another Berber civ. I would also say a couple of years ago I wasn't necessary keen on splitting India either, but I've sort of come around though not as mush as others. It all comes down to opinions, and I guess most importantly what the devs feel like doing. Maybe we've given them some ideas.

 

[Patine]

Yeah, uh, I'm against adding more slots for European civs. Any new European civs (except maybe Italy, and I'm not super gung ho on needing Italy) should replace another European civ (eg, if we add Ireland we don't have Scotland in the same game).

And therein lies the rub. A lot of the approaches proposed to breaking up the Indian blob focus on treating separate dynasties, separate states, as separate civilization - but if we start applyign that standard to Europe, the results would be disastrous in terms of how many tags we need. The same standards applied to suggest separate Mughal or Maurya civs would justify having three or four German civilizations in the game, and Wessex and England and Great Britain separate, and so forth.

That's why I say deblobbing should involve geography and broad cultural groupings, not dynasties or historical eras or political organizations (and why I'm firmly against the Macedon/Greece split). Deblobbing is good to an extent, but fragmenting is not.

So I would lean toward keeping one civ representing much of what India currently does, namely, the (largely Hindi and Magadhan speaking) people of the Gangetic plain and the various states and empires that have been based in that region. This would cover the Maurya, Gupta, Delhi and later Mughal empire, and a large chunk of modern India including the capital as well. That civ could retain the name India, or change to Hindi or Gangetic civilization (or some other name I haven't come up with yet).

But - that leaves a lot of modern India that can still be deblobbed, including the whole north-western desert areas, the central plateaus, and maybe most importantly, the entire Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada) south. Splitting off new civilizations from those regions, I can definitely support, and I would even say that I consider adding a civilization from the Dravidian south (whether we make it a Dravidian, Tamil or Telugu civilization can be discussed) something that should be a high priority.

Your argument here, along with @BuchiTaton and @GeneralZIft, is comparing the historical unity and nationhood of China and India to each other (among other factors that I am not addressing in this post). You speak of India as having only different, "dynasties, not distinct enough to be separate civ's." This would be CLOSER to true with China, where the concept of a Chinese nation has been there, with dynasties and post-Imperial governments, for millennia. But India does not share that concept. It's historical nations and empires are separate cultures and nations with different outlooks and an utter lack of a sense of a unified identity. Because, such a unified identity and nationhood was NOT their own devising - but a colonial creation of the British as a construct of governance. Politically, there was not an, "India," before the FALL of the Mughal Empire to the British East India Company.

 

[Evie]

For everyone to be represented like Europe is, we would need a civ count in the hundreds.

Until and unless we get that (and I stand by the idea that it’s probably decades in the future if at all), the last thing we need is another region brought to the kind of detailed overrepresentation Europe already has. Europe is an unsustainable mistake we’re stuck with and should not repeat, not a model we should apply elsewhere.

Because the cost of doing that is other regions getting no representation at all.

 

[Patine]

For everyone to be represented like Europe is, we would need a civ count in the hundreds.

Until and unless we get that (and I stand by the idea that it’s probably decades in the future if at all), the last thing we need is another region brought to the kind of detailed overrepresentation Europe already has. Europe is an unsustainable mistake we’re stuck with and should not repeat, not a model we should apply elsewhere.

Because the cost of doing that is other regions getting no representation at all.

India is rapidly growing into a big gaming and otherwise computer consuming market as we speak, and has been for quite a while. The current CEO of Microsoft is an Indian-American, keep in mind.