Too many countries and not enough Civs...

[Random Passerby]

Although the new editor lets you add up to 32 (or is it 31?) civs and even place starting units and cities for all of them, this is purely a matter of diversity of choice; there's still a limit of 16 of these in any one game, and starting cities/units seem to be ignored for civs that aren't present. Thus the age-old question: how justifiable is it to lump countries together as civs based solely on geographic proximity?

Generally speaking, I think that the diplomacy limits in the editor make broad, whole-world scenarios set in periods of relative immediate peace the most easy to accomplish with accuracy (although I don't see why in most war scenarios the player can't just easily set up all alliances and DoW's on their own), and earlier is also often better; as time progresses, more and more independant nations important enough to register a significant worldwide presence and impact are created, compared to earlier times where much of the world's land was in the hands of a few large empires or even earlier times when many peoples were too primitive to have much of an impact and showed no signs of spontaneously developing, making them barbarian candidates. My own "pet project" I've been wanting to do for months now is pretty well off here, set in the late Victorian era at the height of imperialism, but of course it still has some hefty pitfalls--there are not enough civs available to represent all the imperial European powers (including the lesser ones), let alone those with even less international presence (Greece, Switzerland). I think it's OK to lump together a few of the lesser imperial powers (Belgium and the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, the Scandinavian countries), but still, what about the really little countries? Do I hand Greece back to the Ottomans, or possibly just pretend it doesn't exist? Since I, like many scenario-makers probably will, intend on doing quite a bit of geographic lumping with free Asian and South American countries, etc., there would be a certain ironic justice in just creating a "Miscellaneous European countries" civ? (I've noticed this approach can really bruise national egos, but unfortunately for at least a few regions there's absolutely nothing to be done).

I would, of course, appreciate any suggestions for my particular situation, but I'd also like to see more general discussion on ways around this problem. One way to use this limitation to overcome another limit--namely, diplomacy restrictions--would of course be to lump together nations with especially strong ties and historic precedents for strong alliances. As far as broad-world scenarios, one example of this would be having a single "British Commonwealth" civ in modern times instead of separate civs for the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc., but it could have significance for scenarios of a less general nature as well--if you were creating a WWII scenario and wanted to be absolutely sure that the major Axis and Allied powers would act as single entities, you could actually make them BE single entities, conserving Civ slots for lesser countries who weren't quite so central to the war. If you did the opposite--i.e., keeping the Axis and Allied powers distinct civs and just lumping together everything else as a single "Neutral" or "Unallied" Civ, that would have the (probably)unintended side effect of making a surprise invasion on one such country provoke declaration of war on lesser powers worldwide.

 

[Kryten]

I agree entirely, it can be a problem. But I think that you've just about covered all the (few) possible solutions.

Many people hate the idea of a WWII scenario with the British/Americans/Canadians/Australians/etc all lumped together as the "Western Allies", but I think that it's the only way it can be done. In this situation is there is another very good reason why it has to be this way: you can only place aircraft in your own cities, not those of an ally. So if the Americans are made a seperate nation, then you're going to have to fight WWII without American air power....something I find inconceivable.

Something that you didn't mention is that this limitation also extends through time in scenarios that cover long historical periods.
Take the history of Asia Minor (nowdays called Turkey, but in ancient times called Anatolia). Which civilization do you place there?
The Hittites?
The Phrygians?
The Lydians?
The Persians?
The Macedonian Kingdom of Antigonus?
Pergamum?, or Cappadocia?, or Pontus?
The Romans?
The Byzantines?
The Seljuk Turks?
The Ottomans?
The only solution I can think of in this situation is to allow the civilization in Asia Minor to build Hittite Chariots, then Phrygian Swordsmen, then Lydian Hoplites, then Macedonian Pike Phalanxes, then Roman Legionaries, and so on, to reflect that different nations dominated the area at different times. But there is still the problem of what to CALL this civilization!
The same with Persia. Many people like to have Persia in their mod/scenarios, but WHICH Persia?
Median Persia? Or Acheamenid Persia? Or Seleucid Persia? Or Parthian Persia? Or Sassanid Persia? Or Arab/Muslim Persia?

Perhaps the only solution is to have scenarios that only cover limited time periods and limited geography and limited numbers of nations.

 

[Random Passerby]

Hrm, that is a point--I hadn't even thought of longer-term ancient scenarios. But there is a minor flaw there, I think, in that most of the candidates you bring up are not evolutions of an indigenous population--if this were a general "ancient world" mod, then adding Roman legions to the build tree for the indigenous Asia Minor cultures would result in Roman legions of Rome fighting Roman legions of Asia Minor, rather than Rome conquering Asia Minor with its superior legions and then the Rome-controlled territories there getting legions by virtue of actually belonging to Rome. There still are problems though... this sort of thing is very sketchy and difficult to control, and for a scenario that's set starting at 500 B.C. (or even earlier) there's no guarantee that Rome ever IS going to go off and conquer Asia Minor. Heavy tweaking of the tech tree and units can help instigate such conquest, i.e., giving the Romans decisively better units at a period corresponding to their period of expansion, but there will still be X factors--if someone destroys the Roman in 800 B.C., well, that's it for them. There are other problems with this approach too, though--for starters, geography still poses just as much a problem from a civ selection standpoint (in a scenario where Asia Minor forms the westernmost part of the map, you'd need to come up with something REALLY creative to simulate a Roman conquest...) and compounds the geographic limits with chronological ones--you'd have to come up with 16 civs that represent all the major players across the entire map for a wide range of time periods (and hope that none get powerful or too weak prematurely).

 

[Michael York]

Random Passerby, i too am working on a late victorian era scenario. i wanted to do something after the german unification but prior to hms dreadnought. im currently trying to decide if it is before or after the spanish american war. the biggest problems are units and britain. the british empire is way too big for anyone to challenge them. Germany is so small that i think i will toy with the minumum science turns to allow everyone to advance about the same. then there is the problem of getting the proper military units, principly the naval units (pre-dreadnoughts, protected, armoured, and light cruisers).

 

[baseballmn8605]

hey, where is this new editor posted that you're talking about?

 

[curswine]

he is talking about the new 1.29f patch which you can download either at http://www.civfanatics.com or over at the official site http://www.civ3.com

 

[Random Passerby]

This is getting off-track, but one possibility for evening the odds in cramped Europe is creating a number of special city improvements which cannot be built under normal circumstances and assigning them to cities at the start, so that key cities in crowded areas of Europe get boosts to trade/science/production that allow them to compete. (The reason they'd have to be special improvements that couldn't otherwise be obtained would be so that the human player couldn't build them in "regular" cities in less crowded areas to get super-duper ultra-colossal production cities).

Although I would prefer to have a good stretch of time open prior WWI (on the theory that the more time events have to run amok, the more plausible it is for WWI to not happen or to happen differently) I'm beginning to look towards the 1890-1900 stretch as well. The Spanish-American war really stripped Spain's colonial possessions down, so a scenario starting 1899-1900 could more easily get by without using a separate civ slot for Spain, which is definitely a plus, and more of Africa is already colonized, but an earlier date set just after the Franco-Prussian War would greatly simplify the situation in the Balkans since you only have one independant nation to worry about.

 

[Bobby Lee]

i think all of you miss the point of civilization.

it sint to replay history. the point is to 1)remake history 2)make your own history. the entire reason for it is so you the player can go through time with a civilization and remake the periods you go through or like i said change history.

 

[Civanator]

You can have more than 16 on one map. you just have to put in starting positions yourself, atleast i think.