The problem here is that I don't see Phoenicia as an intentional blob Civ, but more like a slight modification to Carthage so they could smuggle an old Civ back into game, just under new name, to overcome the "4 new Civs, 4 old Civs" rule they placed upon themselves for the first and second expansion. If you take a closer look on their abilities, leader. agenda, unique district, you'll notice that if you make only really minor modifications, like removing the writing eureka from the Phoenician ability, you could basically call the Civ Carthage.
Can you though? When the average player wants Carthage for Hannibal and elephants, and "Carthage" has neither of these things? I think it strays far more into characteristically Phoenician territory, i.e. "colonization," than Carthaginian territory which would be more explicitly conquest-oriented.
India has been a blob since Civ I, it's not a new trend. We've had Maurya Emperor Ashoka leading India as well there.
So that doesn't really weigh in either direction.
The Angevin Empire was merely a historically short-lived (60 years) personal union between France and England, not a Civ of its own. I see nothing wrong in here to see it as France and England led by one leader.
And yet it, like Gorgo and Ashoka, was seen as historically large and relevant enough to merit a second leader. Which means that even short-lived polities, if sufficiently "imperial" and showing off a different side of a culture's history, are candidates for alternate leaders and blobification.
Germany under Barbarossa is not unlike Greece under Pericles or Gorgo. If you notice that German city list includes only German cities of the Holy Roman Empire, you got the same principle on which Greece is built - a bunch of disconnected City-states unified under one leader from that era. I don't really consider Germany blobbed together with HRE, because HRE is not a Civ in my eyes (appearing in Civ IV only, among other horrendous blobs like Native Americans or Vikings). It was a political organisation, alliance of German, Italian, Dutch states (and Slavic Bohemia, too), with these states having strongly different culture each, different languages, and a rulers of their own, who fought wars among themselves inside the Empire. In Greece, they had that warring too, but they at least had one language, and very similar culture in each Greek City-state (like pantheon of gods, Olympic games...). Due to more similarities than differences, divided ancient Greece does make sense as united Empire under one strong Classical ruler. HRE does not, unless focused on one cultural and national branch, which Friedrich's Germany does.
Except the HRE had been around for 300 years at the time and could hardly be considered as politically "disconnected" as the Grecian leagues, particularly if we are only talking about the "Germany" at its core. Also, as others have observed, Germany seems quite likely to have an alternate leader planned, which explains why the HRE has been appropriated into VI's depiction of German heritage and only has German cities.
Actually, there's more of deblobbing going on compared to Civs of Civ IV and Civ V, with Maori taken out of blob Polynesia or Scotland being our sort of Celtic Civ. There would be nothing wrong with keeping the Byzantine Empire an independent Civ, especially considering how important power it was.
Broad statements that either "blobbing" or "de-blobbing" are overgeneralizations that skip the
why behind the changes. Neither a hard rule of "blob more" or "blob less" serves VI's purpose if it's not done in service some specific design goal. In VI's case, likely due to fan backlash against the Celts and Polynesia, the design goal appears to be to "reorganize" civs by their cultural continuity, at least better than previous installments did. So, yes,
both blobbing and de-blobbing could happen, it really depends on how
culturally related two civs might be, and how much unnecessary design space they were occupying in the past. And the fact is that Byzantium was, to a large extent, a cultural extension of the Roman Empire, especially in its earlier years; and that it is often one of the
last civs added because, let's be honest, it's just a roided out Rome in a Greek marinade.
If you build unified Italy like Greece - centered around the period of the Renaissance, when the country was divided, and then picking one or two significant leaders of the most significant states (say, Venice and Florence), I don't think there would be any need for de-italisation of Rome to make the two Civs distinct enough from each other.
I'm not going to go into this one because the Italy problem is just too complicated. But I will say that
settling for, say, a Florentine and Venetian leader, does not feel like it does Italy justice.
I wouldn't take Georgia as a serious decision of the devs for it to replace Byzantium, more like pleasing the fans by including their widespread meme Civ+leader (meme of every hint/reveal secrently pointing on Tamar of Georgia - seen both on reddit and Civfanatics) into the game. Obviously, that doesn't mean that Georgia doesn't belong into game. Tamar of Georgia is a splendid choice of leader of its own, and I'm glad to see a Civ from Caucasus. But I don't consider it a replacement of Byzantium.
There's about 1000 years of Byzantine history to choose abilities and units from, to build a Civ from. Hints of Byzantium in the Ottoman Empire and Russia are quite unavoidable, since core lands of the former were also the core lands of the Byzantine Empire, and Russia and Byzantium had historically close ties, so there has been mutual influence, too. I'm not sure where Poland includes strong Byzantine concept, though?
Oh, I'm aware of the Georgia meme. But also, if the aim was to fill geographic maps and only slightly broaden the idea of "empire," then Georgia was an excellent addition on its own merits. Of all of the Caucasus options, it's the clear frontrunner for several reasons, moreso than Khazaria or Armenia. My observation with respect to Byzantium is merely that Georgia got into VI first, is overall more
unique than Byzantium, and coincidentally happens to fill a lot of mechanical and aesthetic niches that would normally be expected to be filled by Byzantium. It's not
expressly a replacement for Byzantium, but in a game with a limited roster that would rather work on new cultures than constantly revisit old staples, it
could suffice as an improved spiritual successor to Byzantium.
Poland primarily trods on Byzantium with a heavy cavalry unit. It's purely a mechanical thing, just like Hungary's poaching on Byzantine territory is pretty nominally limited to a cross. In isolation these are fairly trivial to overcome, but they add up when trying to find design space for Byzantium.
I don't understand here: Roman alt-leader gives us only space for a unique leader ability, and if we're lucky, a unique unit. You can open and build much more new good things by building a new Civ, especially if you open a time period yet unexplored in previous Civ game, like the Komnenian Restoration. By keeping it within the Roman Civ, you'd miss opportunity for new unique infrastructure, unique unit (provided that picked Byzantine/Roman-alt leader doesn't get one), unique palace, possibly even architectonical style of the Civ cities, you'd be using Latin/Italian names for diplomats and spies as a Civ that had Greek both as common and official language during most of its existence, and you'd miss unique music (and this plays a huge role for me, since I'm listening to Civ music regularly, and would be greatly disappointed to see devs missing on such great opportunity as Byzantine music, especially considering how much I love the Byzantine themes from both Civ IV and Civ V) As the alt-Roman leader, you'll thus get about a third of what you could otherwise get, and, as you said, it would feel strange to have a Civ built around Classical Roman Empire with Legions, baths and ability called "All roads lead to Rome" represent a Civ that didn't hold Rome for most of its existence, with a high medieval emperor slapped on top of it.
I believe I observed as much that blobbing Byzantium into Rome would indeed give Byzantium the short end of the design stick. That is problematic, at least if you are determined to play out your Byzantine fantasies. But the rest of this ranting seems to miss my exact point: everyone is so
fixated on getting Byzantium the way they want it and not acknowledging what good things like Italy and Bulgaria might come of changing up the formula. A design decision to deliberately reduce Byzantine presence in the game could, in fact, result in equally fun things added to the game that you weren't even thinking about. I've heard this rant dozens of times at this point, but no one seems to care about all of the
other cultures in the region was have been
always missing out on because "Byzantium will do."
Another problem is that we'd take away alternate leader slot from, say, China, Persia or Egypt, which, I believe, need an alternate leader much more.
This seems to be a non-issue. I am convinced that we will continue to get alternate leaders after expack 3. The shortlist and art design would likely have been completed long ago. They might already have some recordings ready if they lucked out on versatile voice actors. And given that there is no mechanical balancing or animation interaction with the map itself, the leader animation team could pretty much work on an independent timeline from the rest of the game's development. There could be a dozen alternate leaders at various stages of completion in the pipeline right now.
And let's be frank. If any European civ deserves two leaders, Rome is high on the list. I would argue Germany also wants a Kingdom of Germany or Magna Germania leader, and Russia wants a USSR or Kievan Rus' leader, but Rome definitely wants another leader as well,
especially if the leader represents the scope of its history in the same vein as Chandragupta does for India.
(side note: yes China and Egypt need and deserve alternate leaders. However I don't think any culture hero could adequately stand beside Cyrus, and regardless if my "Alexander/Timur" theory below is true then Persia already has quasi-alternate leaders. And, depending on how you look at it, got more attention than other civs because it was split off into two or even three civs rather than lumped together like India.)
When it comes to Bulgaria, I'd like to see it myself, but I'd blame Alexander the Great Civ or the fact that Greece, out of all Civs, has two leaders, for the lacking space in Balkans more than I'd blame Byzantium. Let's admit that not much would have happened if Alexander was a Great General and, say, China had two leaders instead of Greece. Without these two, maybe we could now be debating about possibilities of including both Byzantium and some Balkan Slavic empire, like Serbia, or, yes, Bulgaria, in Civ VI.
Alexander is the big wrench in the alternate leader machine, but I posit two things that make Alexander very different from Byzantium or nearly any other potentially blobbable civ.
The first, is that Alexander doesn't really represent a "civ" so much as a cult of personality. His empire was extremely short-lived, and really represents one of the purest examples of a large imperial expansion built purely around a single leader figure. Everything was named after him, and everything crumbled after him. So he really is an anomaly that didn't fit with Greece or any other civ, because his wasn't a "civ." It was just an unprecedentedly large explosion of narcissism. You absolutely cannot say the same thing about other figures. Maybe Napoleon. Maybe Tamerlane. But they didn't name dozens of cities after themselves, and Napoleon was ultimately a failure and Tamerlane had a massive cultural legacy.
The second is that Alexander, by being grouped with another culture hero who held roughly the same territory, functions effectively more like a split-off alternate "Persian" leader, like the "western half" of the Persian legacy. Kind of like how Scotland has been split off from England as the northern half of the British legacy. Now, I admit this interpretation could easily swing in favor of Byzantium being separate from Rome as well, although I would point back to the fact that the political distinctions between Macedonia and Persia were stronger than those between the Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. But I don't see Alexander as obviating any Balkan states, when--and especially if we complete the "Persian" trifecta with Timur--he really feels more pertinent to Persia.
Though I believe we may have discussed this matter earlier... We might eventually end again by having to agree to disagree. I apologise if my writing is a bit weaker or my sentences are disjointed or hardly understandable somewhere, I was sort of tired and wanted to go to sleep, but I noticed this comment and felt a need to reply.
Again, I have made peace with Byzantium. If done well I wouldn't see them at all as undeserving of being included, when juxtaposed against Scotland, the Netherlands, Macedonia. I'm just very bored of them and really want to give Bulgaria, to my mind an equally deserving candidate, a chance. And, furthermore, I still think that Byzantium--by virtue of
actually being Rome--not only exists in that middle gray area where it could swing either way between a full civ or an alternate leader, but leans slightly toward begging to be blobbed with Rome for the sake of VI's clear preoccupation with cultural diversity. We already have Greece and the lavra and male church choirs in the game.
We have, crowding around Byzantium, a civ with trade route infrastructure and unique forts (Rome), a civ with trade route extrastructure (Russia), a civ with city-state protectorates and walls (Georgia), a civ with city-state levying and a cross-symbol (Hungary), a civ with a diplomat UG and unique naval unit (Ottomans), a civ with heavy cavalry and territory-grabbing forts (Poland); and several of these have a strong religious bent. Byzantium's design space is
incredibly cramped. What we don't have is a Bulgarian woman's choir, or a European civ with a science UB, or a civ that could reasonably represent all of South Slavia and most of Ukraine while feeling culturally
authentic as opposed to yet another Greco-state. So it is totally fine that you love Byzantium, but it seems like it wouldn't add as much to the game as many think it would.
) as dual leaders.
