[R&F] Based on the new features - which civilizations and leaders should be introduced in R&F?

[WillowBrook]

My original list from December 1:

Korea
Mongols
Dutch
Portugal
Mali
Zulu
Inca
Apache
Alt leader for Rome

I suspect three of those guesses will be wrong, but I don't know which three.

Portugal, Apache, and alt leader for Rome are (almost certainly) wrong. So, to be right about how many I'd get wrong, we still need Inca, Mali, and Zulu. Unlikely, but I'll stick with them.

I'll pick Georgia now as the last Civ. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Ottomans or Italy (instead of any of my remaining guesses).

Do we have any good candidates for the female leader with an ability related to golden ages besides Tamar?

 

[Lord Lakely]

There are still options for the Mystery Female leader other than Tamar, hold ur horses. (Maria Theresa, Shammuramat and Zenobia, to name three.)

and I definitely agree with those who say the Ottomans/Turks are next. After the alt-leader and the obscure Native American leader nobody would have seen coming if not for a very unfortunate Chinese leak, the next reveal should be a well-regarded returnee Civ. This description suits the Ottomans better than most other options (except maybe Carthage), I think, due their geographical distance from every new Civ revealed so far.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Come on! Tamar is just a meme leader. I would be really surprised if they include her in the game.
Unless I deeply underestimate power of this forum

 

[Guandao]

Come on! Tamar is just a meme leader. I would be really surprised if they include her in the game.
Unless I deeply underestimate power of this forum

Tamar is more than a meme. She was a legit good ruler. Definitely a better leader choice than Gorgo, Tomyris and Cleopatra.

 

[Wingednosering]

Do we have any good candidates for the female leader with an ability related to golden ages besides Tamar?

Zenobia, Dido, Ranavalona, Nandi

Yaa Asantewaa (Ashanti)
Taytu Batel (Ethiopia)
Amina (Zaria)

Don't forget Queen Idia of the Benin Kingdom/Empire. There's also Yennenga of the Mossi, who's legendary as well, Orompoto of Yoruba/Oyo, Ana Nzinga of Ndongo, Zewditu of Ethiopia, and Nehanda Nyakasikana of the Shona. Also, Dihya of the Berbers.

And that's just Africa. A few of these can't happen (Ranavalona and Ana Nzinga specifically)

 

[pgm123]

I'm not an expert on Native American cultures, but this doesn't seem more "impressive" than other Old World pre-civilised cultures, which you wouldn't consider adding.
Ubaid culture - they built public temples, developed irrigation systems, and floodgates.
Hallstatt culture - which I'm not deeply familiar with, but they have produced some very detailed metal works, like you can see here, here, and some more here.
One can go on for long with names of plenty of Old World cultures, and that's even without diving into their social structure and cultural life, which can also be interesting.
Should we include any of them in the game? No.

I'm generally against the idea of including "cultures." The Hallstatt are a proto-Celtic culture and the Celts have been in the game before. The people of the Ubaid period are almost certainly represented by Ur, though I'm less familiar with them than Hallstatt.

Maybe if there would be some more developed mechanism of natives or tribal communities, not the categorising overly aggressive idea of "Barbarians".
But as for now, the way the game is built and with other selections of civs to compare with, I see no reason to add native of south America. Unless Firaxis are desperate about the geographical thing.

I just don't get your line of thought here. It might just be the idea of "tribal" can be so confusing. Let's ignore the Americas for a second, just to make this easy. Modern Iraq is often described as tribal. By this, they mean that larger family structures are influential players in society. Ireland (particularly Medieval Ireland) is classified as Clannish. By this, they mean that larger family structures are influential players in society. In short, they're not really useful terms to describe anything.

In the North American context, when they say "tribal," they mean that there were sub-groups within a nation. They were linked together by a shared history, but not necessarily unified. They might get together at religions occasions or for larger games, but they'd rarely form a single cohesive group. At best, they might form Confederacies, particularly in the face of a common enemy. Now, explain how this differs greatly from pre-Macedonian Greece in terms of societal structure. To me, they're basically the same.

But still, I think we have to accept the idea that some areas and cultures of the world have been less civilised than others.

Perhaps if you can find a single, consistent definition of "civilized," you might be able to pull it off. You can then say, "using this definition, X was more civilized than Y." You'd need a consistent definition, though. And if your definition is simply "what Europe did," you'd just be doing a tautology.

I know you can point out Scythians as an example for another not fully civilised culture. I may accept that.
But did anyone suggest adding more and more Ancient Era Steppe civs?
I would not protest against it if the request was just to add one north American Native group to the game.

There were some pretty impressive Buddhist Scythian empires in northwest India, the Punjab, and in Bactria.

I still find the suggestions for 4-5 Native American cultures in the game very exaggerated, and I doubt we would have heard such a ideas if they hadn't lived on the territory of the current world's leading power.

I think it has more to do with the massive geographical spread of the continent and that there was relative parity between tribes to the point where you can't just "pick one." After the Beaver Wars, the Iroquois held sovereignty over most of the northeastern United States (basically upstate New York, Upper Canada, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois), but that still leaves a lot of area unclaimed on the map. Africa has similar problems where you can't fill up the whole map with just a few civs. Eurasia, on the other hand, can be covered without too much effort by less than 10 civs and that will get you overlap.

 

[Duuk]

And, weirdly, in game mechanics that means that the African and American (north and south) civs have a bias toward success in a TSL game. There just isn't enough competition for 3 landmasses so large.

To "balance" them, you'd need to add, at minimum:

Cree*, Canada, Seminole, Apache, Sioux for North America
Inca**, Gran Columbia (weird overlap with Inca), Argentina for South America
Zulu***, Mali, Ethiopia, Carthage for Africa

* - Already confirmed
** - Current betting has them as a favorite for RF
*** - Almost certainly not in RF, but probably included by XP2/DLC

Notice that the list for Africa gets a little "familiar", so maybe Ghana? But you start to run into weird overlap because the most well known "Civilization"-level influencers seem to have developed close to each other. I'm clearly not an African scholar though, so someone else might be able to fill that area in better than I.

 

[Absolution]

Perhaps if you can find a single, consistent definition of "civilized," you might be able to pull it off. You can then say, "using this definition, X was more civilized than Y." You'd need a consistent definition, though. And if your definition is simply "what Europe did," you'd just be doing a tautology.

I am not interested in bringing this discussion back, but I'll just point out that I was, at any time, not referring to civilisation as an implantation of European political structure.
My view would rather focus on Mesopotamia, and include East Asia, Indian sub-continent, Europe, South East Asia, Nile, Mesoamerica, late eras of Central Asia, Western Africa as well as some other isolated areas such as Andes and Madagascar.
So the definition would be "what the Old Word did", and this is quite big in my opinion in order to set the terms. Old World and Mesoamerica.

 

[CPWimmer]

Predictions before the break:

1. Korea (Seondeok 632 AD - Female and under represented time period, plus other tie-ins)
2. Netherlands (and Wilhemena met my 20th century leader guess as well)
3. Mongols (First look revealed Ghengis instead of Kublai, oh well )
4. Inca (Flip flopping again back to Inca, with Maya now extremely unlikely due to Palenque city state sighting)
5. Western NA Native American Tribe (still leaning south west due to TSL map, and also Delicate Arch)
6. Ottoman/Turks or Byzantine (leaning heavily towards Ottoman over Byzantine due to a sighting of a Turkish minaret on "cover" art and Antioch as a city state; but Carthage may replace both in this slot)
7. New African Civ (or maybe Zulu or Mali, but my gut says it's someone new. I do see an argument against it being a new Civ, thanks to Nubia as the new civ for Africa - but I can't see them completely bypassing the continent)
8. Carthage (to fill the Ancient Civ requirement although this is the slot I am still the most uncertain about)

Alt Leader: Isabella of Castile - still based almost entirely on Pre-release leader poster and the strong feeling that it will be a female leader of a Civ that currently has a male leader.

Where things stand now:

1. Korea (Seondeok 632 AD - Female and under represented time period, plus other tie-ins)
2. Netherlands (and Wilhemena met my 20th century leader guess as well)
3. Mongols (First look revealed Ghengis instead of Kublai, oh well )
4. Cree Western NA Native American Tribe (I was leaning south west due to TSL map, and also Delicate Arch) - but I still consider this a win, given their initial city list shows them starting in Saskatchewan.
5. Inca (Reasons haven't changed)
6. Ottoman/Turks (Reasons haven't changed)
7. Carthage (Moving up one slot, I now think that Carthage will fill both the the Ancient Civ requirement AND the African requirement AND maybe even the female leader role w/ Dido - still a slim chance they go more modern in Africa with Mali since Korea is pre-1000 AD, but I think they need a BC representative here).
8. Something European: Sweden, Celts, Italy, Georgia??? I am still at a loss here, but I now think that a European slot is now guaranteed with Isabella NOT getting the Alt leader. Still uncomfortable with this guess, but has their ever been a Civ expansion with just one European representative?

Alt Leader: Chandragupta of India instead of Isabella of Castile really blew up my list - it took a spot away from both Europe and a Female leader. Does that mean Tamar of Georgia is really a thing???

 

[Duuk]

No on Carthage, Yes on Italy, and Georgia is a Stone Cold Lock

 

[pgm123]

Geographically yes, but culturally Mesoamerica is its own region. In general parlance, "Native Americans" refer to the non-Inuit indigenous peoples north of the Rio Grande; the same definition (usually minus the Na-Dene) is generally used in scholarship. Canadians use the term "First Nations" in more or less the same way.

I do feel this definition gets into some tricky ground when dealing with those in Spanish America ceded to the U.S. in the Mexican-American War or those who were trans-border people, particularly west of the Rio Grande. Would you say the Comanche north of the Mexican border were Native Americans and those south were not? I understand that Native American is considered the Anglo-phone subset of Amerindian, but there are fuzzy areas. Most of the Southwest Native Americans live in Mexico, albeit north of where the Aztec lived.

That's not to say we should reinvent terms. You're right about the convention. But we don't have to limit ourselves to it. Instead of saying we hope Firaxis eventually adds two to three Native American nations, we could hope they add one from the Eastern Woodlands and one from the Southwest. The Cree are both Eastern Woodlands and Plains. Instead of knocking both out, they can probably add more without too much redundancy. That said, I lean towards the Cree eliminating the Shawnee. In their form, they're more or less an Eastern Woodlands Algonquin people, with a leader who led a fight (in Canada) against a white power. Their leader is a Plains leader, but that's really the only difference from Tehcumseh.

 

[liv]

I want another boat civ. with portugal out I am hoping for the ottomans or carthage. I am happy with them (and hope they have a female ruler)

 

[Vahnstad]

I think it has more to do with the massive geographical spread of the continent and that there was relative parity between tribes to the point where you can't just "pick one." After the Beaver Wars, the Iroquois held sovereignty over most of the northeastern United States (basically upstate New York, Upper Canada, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois), but that still leaves a lot of area unclaimed on the map. Africa has similar problems where you can't fill up the whole map with just a few civs. Eurasia, on the other hand, can be covered without too much effort by less than 10 civs and that will get you overlap.

Do we need to fill that map?

3-4 North-American civs is more than enough (America and Cree. We get a third one in DLC or expansion (Canada). Iroquois or western NA civ possibly too
2 Mesoamerican civs (Maya, Inca)
3-4 South-American civs (Brazil, Inca and hopefully Muisca. Possibly Argentina, Colombia or Mapuche/Tupi/..)
6 African civs? (We already have Nubia and Kongo, just add Mali, Zulu, Ethiopia, Carthage and maybe Ghana or maybe Morocco, Madagascar or Kilwa. But focus on African staple civs for now, because i'm worried we won't get them

 

[pgm123]

Wouldn't she be a Kongolese leader? She's the only one on your list I've heard of, but disregarded because her civ is already present in the game.

I'd hope not. I know people mean well when they suggest her for Kongo, but she never ruled Kongo. It kind of strikes me as people not really caring to distinguish between non-European peoples. At most, her Kingdom was a vassal of Kongo (though I don't believe they were in her lifetime). It would be like Sejong the Great ruling China instead of Korea.

 

[Inhalaattori]

At this point only Ottomans and Inca seem pretty certain choices for me. They are probably two most important Civs we are still missing. Also South-America now only has Brazil. Other two Civs are probably one from Africa and one from Europe.

 

[Absolution]

And, weirdly, in game mechanics that means that the African and American (north and south) civs have a bias toward success in a TSL game. There just isn't enough competition for 3 landmasses so large.

To "balance" them, you'd need to add, at minimum:

Cree*, Canada, Seminole, Apache, Sioux for North America
Inca**, Gran Columbia (weird overlap with Inca), Argentina for South America
Zulu***, Mali, Ethiopia, Carthage for Africa

* - Already confirmed
** - Current betting has them as a favorite for RF
*** - Almost certainly not in RF, but probably included by XP2/DLC

Notice that the list for Africa gets a little "familiar", so maybe Ghana? But you start to run into weird overlap because the most well known "Civilization"-level influencers seem to have developed close to each other. I'm clearly not an African scholar though, so someone else might be able to fill that area in better than I.

Having Colombia and Brazil would be enough for the colonial powers of South America.
Instead of Argentina, I would choose the Quilombolas, with Zumbi as their leader.
We can even find some names of cities or settlements for them. Unique Unit - Capoeirista
That's how you complete the American triangle - natives, colonists, slaves.

For African "refreshing" choices, I would suggests Adding the Great Fulos, with Tengella, instead of a "Ghanaian" civ (Mali/Songhai) once again.
It would also give you a pre-Islamic West African glimpse.
Instead of Ethiopia, we can have Dervish Somalia, with Muhammad Abdullah Hassan.
Carthage can be replaced with either Numidians (Massinisa) or Vandals (Genseric), both highly refreshing.
Zulus are obviously unreplaceable


And BTW - don't you think that the inclusion of the Cree cancels the clues for Canada? That Red Forest, that Quebecan Fort, can accompany the inclusion of the Cree.
Perhaps those will appear in a scenario of N/E American colonialism, featuring England, France and the Cree.

 

[CPWimmer]

And BTW - don't you think that the inclusion of the Cree cancels the clues for Canada? That Red Forest, that Quebecan Fort, can accompany the inclusion of the Cree.
Possibly they'll appear in a scenario about N/E American colonialism, including England, France and the Cree.

Hmm... that would be interesting - if Chateau Frontenac were in R&F, but only in a Scenario... I hadn't thought about that at all!

 

[Wingednosering]

I want another boat civ. with portugal out I am hoping for the ottomans or carthage. I am happy with them (and hope they have a female ruler)

Netherlands?


I'm positive we'll get an African civ, but I'm still hesitant about Carthage. I prefer African civs that feel less European personally, but preferences aside, they do have a lot going for them:

- No Carthage CS sightings
- Netherlands is the closest thing to a naval power anybody has even suggested for R&F let alone confirmed
- Female leader (Dido)
- Could work with ages in an interesting way

The biggest hit against them though is...Dido. Aside from Pedro, Genghis and Alexander, we don't have a single Civ V leader in VI (and honestly, how could you not have Alex or Genghis in a game called Civilization?). Dido would be a rare exception to the rule, plus she's mythical and wasn't terribly well received last time (better than Hannibal though). Pedro is the only leader that gives her a chance in my opinion.

 

[pgm123]

I am no interested in bringing this discussion back, but I'll just point out that I was, at any time, not referring to civilisation an implantation of European political structure.
My view would rather focus on Mesopotamia, and include East Asia, Indian sub-continent, Europe, South East Asia, Nile, Mesoamerica, late eras of Central Asia, Western Africa as well as some other isolated areas such as Andes and Madagascar.
So the definition would be "what the Old Word did", and this is quite big in my opinion in order to set the terms. Old World and Mesoamerica.

While that's consistent to make that your definition, it's very tautological to say the Old World is more "civilized" because they did what the Old World did. I could make my definition of civilization to be based on what the New World did and reach a similar conclusion. But there's no need to keep going, if you don't want to. I just listened to a Podcast on Socrates, so I'm more argumentative than my normally argumentative self.

Do we need to fill that map?

I'd prefer to, yes. I'd be happy with some City States filling some of that gap, which is something I advocate for Africa as well. (Kumasi is good, but I'd add a trading City Sate of either Benin, Ife-Ife, or Oyo; Zimbabwe is good, but add Mogadishu or Mombassa.)

3-4 North-American civs is more than enough (America and Cree. We get a third one in DLC or expansion (Canada). Iroquois or western NA civ possibly too

Sure, if you get 3-4, I'll be pretty happy. U.S. plus three Native American covers quite a bit: Cree in the northern plains, Iroquois in the Eastern Woodlands, Navajo in the Southwest. Culturally, you're missing some regions (Southeast U.S., basin, Pacific Northwest), but it's not terrible. But North America is huge, so there's room for more.

2 Mesoamerican civs (Maya, Inca)
3-4 South-American civs (Brazil, Inca and hopefully Muisca. Possibly Argentina, Colombia or Mapuche/Tupi/..)

I'm preferential to adding Inca, Mapuche, and Colombia. Something tells me those in Argentina probably don't like that Brazil is in the game without them, though. And you could have some fun with Argentina.

6 African civs? (We already have Nubia and Kongo, just add Mali, Zulu, Ethiopia, Carthage and maybe Ghana or maybe Morocco, Madagascar or Kilwa. But focus on African staple civs for now, because i'm worried we won't get them

I would like Axum/Ethiopia. I never cared much for the Zulu, but I'm not opposed because they at least fit a spot on the map. Zimbabwe or Mutapa could also fit that same spot and be a trade/infrastructure civ instead of the warrior Zulu. Mali, Songhai, and Ghana unfortunately all cover roughly the same geographic area. I suspect they're viewed as largely interchangeable.

 

[Duuk]

And BTW - don't you think that the inclusion of the Cree cancels the clues for Canada? That Red Forest, that Quebecan Fort, can accompany the inclusion of the Cree.
Perhaps those will appear in a scenario of N/E American colonialism, featuring England, France and the Cree.

There is a 0% chance of Canada in RF. But I'd like to see them in a future DLC.

I haven't wavered (much) on my bets for RF's remaining 4 (but I have adjusted the order based on when I think the First Looks will hit):
Ottomans
Italy
Inca
Georgia