And here's the prize for most astute observation in this thread. BNW is going to drastically revamp the game to favor economics and tourism/culture. It is my belief that civs that play to that theme will be well represented in the game. Sure, there will be bones thrown to the warhawks out there, but I think this is as good a logic as any to make me expect to see Venice in the game.
I generally enjoy economics anyway. (Actual) Civilization is driven more by the distribution of resources than simple war, and the control of lucrative trade routes has been a pushing factor for conflict forever.
If all Spain did was buy Chinese products and all China did was take Spanish gold in exchange, Spain would become poor very, very quickly.
Not exactly. Spanish silver was also bought by many Europeans, driving the Portuguese sugar trade, the Russian fur trade, British cash crops, etc. In the case of the British, by bought, I mean ruthlessly stole at every given chance. There's also the fact that Spainish merchant buying Chinese manufacturers recoup losses by turning around and selling those back on both domestic markets and not.
The extraction of gold/silver and raw material is also an economic activity, one the Spaniards did very well. And Spanish power increased dramatically relative to Chinese power while it was managing this, before decay started to set in.
Relatively.
The extraction of raw materials is nowhere near as lucrative as the buying and selling of Chinese manufactures back in domestic markets. If it wasn't, Spain wouldn't have mined silver to buy them in the first place. However, in the trade directly between Spain and China, China did hold a dominant position.
Plenty of Spanish authors discuss the long term impact of the fortune and power Spain made in extraction of primary resources - the fact that sloth was widespread and the Spanish heart eventually shied away from the virtues that won it it's wealth in the first place. This is the cyclical nature of history.
Napoleon invading Spain had a bit to do with it as well.
In the long run resource extraction it is a primary activity not a secondary one like manufacturing where the real profit lies, but if civilizations built on a warrior ethos were not impactful in history, Spain would hardly be the only civilization left out. The Arabs and Turks were peoples who made their mark in the same way the Spaniards did. The Arabs were fanatical, incredibly courageous, and as intrepid as the Spaniards in their zenith but for the same reasons as with Spain they've more often than not been second to the Persians.
I wouldn't count the caliphates out. There's a reason why Arabia's trait, even in vanilla, was trade related.
China in its history has almost always been greater than Spain. Though frequently martial/economic/cultural output per person in Spain has vastly outweighed that of the Chinese, to the point where Spain was punching far above its weight and near that of China.
Extremely debatable. The fact that everything Spain and the following colonizing powers did was, at first, to trade with China and to enter the Chinese markets means that China was still performing on a far higher level than Spain. Saying that Spain was even approaching China in economic, martial, or cultural output of China would be reading into the deep rooted fallacy of strategy game players.
Namely, the more of the map colored your color, the better you must be doing.
It's my history. I'd advocate the Chinese pay a lot more attention to Han China. European societies should absolutely be Eurocentric (but not ignorant of the outside world) in the context you use it, as Chinese society should be Sinocentric.
Except world history is not Eurocentric, it is, if anything, Sinocentric. All roads may have led to Rome once upon a time, but all caravans and ships pointed toward China between 1200 and 1850.
And the royal "we" is the realistic "we". I know there are people of non-Indo European heritage here, but since anti-European focus is a trait most vocally held by people of European heritage themselves, I figured it a safe bet that the poster is of the same stock as myself. If not he should assume himself exempted from the "we". If I'm reading a Chinese-dominated forum and they talk of "we" I'm not going to assume that includes myself.
My mother is Irish and my father is African-America. Therefore, I don't consider myself of European stock but global stock. That must be why I don't view history solely through the lenses of Eurocentrism, but through the lenses of global trade. When it comes to global trade, China was dominant up until the Opium War and is, once again, a major player in global trade. The period of lost dominance less than two centuries.
I love how not too thrilled is leading the poll. Why the hell would they include a civ where only about 25% are anticipating it? That's why... I still believe they are not being included
Because it is coming in an expansion, not a DLC. You're buying the game for mechanics, not new civilizations. That's why Venice is more likely as an expansion civilization than DLC while Spain and the Vikings made great DLC civilizations, because people will shell out the money for the latter two.