Civ 4 Civilizations

[Truronian]

This is my point. The Celts are/were more of a culture group than a civilization. Brennus led a Celtic army not the Celtic army when he attacked Rome. You do not here stories about the Celtic capital of the Celtic king because there have been none. Including the Celts is in my opinion similar to including a nation of the Native Americans.

The mongols and vikings have at times be united under one leader (Leaf Erikkson, Gengis) and so for me this justifies their inclusion (though they are far from my favorite civs). I think the Celts crosses the line in the Nationality/Cultural identity debate.

 

[Urederra]

This is my point. The Celts are/were more of a culture group than a civilization. Brennus led a Celtic army not the Celtic army when he attacked Rome. You do not here stories about the Celtic capital of the Celtic king because there have been none. Including the Celts is in my opinion similar to including a nation of the Native Americans.
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That is a very good point Truronian. I agree.

And I repeat again, (It seems that there are people that writes posts without reading the previous ones)

THERE WERE CELTS OUTSIDE GREAT BRITAIN.

Hello, are you reading this?

There were Celts in France and in Spain as well. And I haven't done more research on that, but maybe in other european countries. So, one person can have celtic ancestors without being Scottish or Welsh.

 

[mitsho]

@Trurorian, correct. But the vikings weren't united either, there were many kingdoms or one nation that surpressed the others (Denmark or Sweden, ever heard of the Kalmar Union or why Oslo was named Cristiania?)

But this is debatable, but you're totally wrong regarding the question of celtic civilization. Do you know the definition of a civilization? The scientific one (the one you find in a lexicon) doesn't include anything related to political situation/unification, but is solemny related to culture (and everything that includes) and science.
Ok, Firaxis uses its own definition, but still, this point is viable.

Then again, the Celtic civilization can be compared with the Arab one. The Arabs weren't united half of their time, no, they formed little caliphats, emirats, sultanats, there are the Ommajads, the Cordobans, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Saudis ... but still we regard them as one civilization because they were so similar to each other.
Same with Iberia: Leon, Castilia, Catalonia, Portugal, ...
And the list goes on: Maya, Vikings, 'Turks' (not Ottomans), Sumerians, India and China to a degree (not looking on modern history), and at last the culture that defined the word 'civilization' : GREECE!

I hope you can now understand why unified is no criterium for a civilization.

mitsho

 

[Crayton]

When was all of Greece ruled by one person? Alexander in the 4th Century BC, almost two millennia since Minoan and Mycenaean culture began!
Who was next to rule all of Greece? The Romans!
History tells us that although the region was not unified politically the culture was constant.
The same goes for the Arabs, the Germans, the Mongols, and the Chinese.

 

[Kyriakos]

there were some gauls for a limited time in asia minor as well. The region was named galatia. They were in war with some of the epigonoi (alexander the great's successors) kingdoms for a while, before being driven completely out.
According to a writer who lived aeons after that (1rst century AD i think), Lucian (a very famous prose writer, of whom many stories survive) the galateans had infact some unique war machines which were threatening to win them the war against Antigonos Soter (i think it was Antigonos). Hoewever they had never seen elephants, and so fled the battlefield upon seing them. This all was said to have happened circa 300 BC

 

[frekk]

When was all of Greece ruled by one person? Alexander in the 4th Century BC, almost two millennia since Minoan and Mycenaean culture began!
Who was next to rule all of Greece? The Romans!
History tells us that although the region was not unified politically the culture was constant.
The same goes for the Arabs, the Germans, the Mongols, and the Chinese.

Also the Mayans and the Sumerians, both of whom were only briefly united under foreign empires (the Toltec and the Akkadians, respectively) but on their own only existed as a collection of city-states.

Also, Alexander was not Greek ... same situation, Alexander was Macedonian and the Greek collection of city-states was just the first of his conquests in creating the Macedonian Empire. The Greeks referred to the Macedonians as "barbarians" (they didn't necessarily mean uncivilized, but definately meaning not Greek).

The Celts fit quite nicely in with the idea of the kind of cultural union represented by these other groups, since they also shared a common culture, without an actual (domestic) political union.


@Truronian - Leif Ericsson did not unify the Vikings. He is famous for discovering Newfoundland not for uniting the Vikings (who were never united).

 

[Desertsnow]

The Celts were, in fact, all over the continent. The Biblical Galatians were in fact a Celtic tribe. How many of you knew that?

 

[Kyriakos]

Also, Alexander was not Greek ... same situation, Alexander was Macedonian and the Greek collection of city-states was just the first of his conquests in creating the Macedonian Empire. The Greeks referred to the Macedonians as "barbarians" (they didn't necessarily mean uncivilized, but definately meaning not Greek).

this is a bad half-truth. Some mention them as non-greek, others as greek. I dont plan to pick this up though

 

[Truronian]

@Mitsho

The point I'm arguing is that the Celts fall outside the Firaxian definition of a civilization, which is based predominately on the mechanics of civ. They prefer civilizations that have had capitals, great leaders and governments because this is an intrinsic element of gameplay. As for Iberia, the previous inclusion of Spain and Portugal was because of their power during the 1500s, when they were united countries. While it is valid that there are other examples of this phenomenon in Civ, I see the Celts as the most un-civ like of the group.

@everyone else

Most of these counter-examples have gone through periods of division, but then haven't all civilizations. As for Greece, if Alexander was not initially Greek, he developed an identity as a Greek ruler (he is in Civ 3 after all). As for the Vikings, I was misinformed. If the above is true, I would prefer for the Norse/Norway to feature.

I'm just not a fan of having culture groups being civilizations. Of course if they do feature I can just mod. It is interesting to see others opinions on the subject however.

 

[Brain]

But this is debatable, but you're totally wrong regarding the question of celtic civilization. Do you know the definition of a civilization? The scientific one (the one you find in a lexicon) doesn't include anything related to political situation/unification, but is solemny related to culture (and everything that includes) and science.
Ok, Firaxis uses its own definition, but still, this point is viable.

By that definition, most European "civilizations" should be eliminated in favor of a "Western Civilization". Of course, that's not going to happen.

 

[HourlyDaily]

See this is the problem I have with people saying that the Celts shouldn't be in the game.

We know that the all of the Celts were never unified, also everyone is aware of the large areas of Europe that were Celtic civs (because they replaced other groups, and were later replaced by other migrating tribes.) But you can't say that the Celts never had a capital, okay they never had one like Beijing, but they did and do have large cities that serve(d) as the centre of culture and that will do in Civ terms. Great Leaders is an easy one - this is where the Scots/Welsh/Irish/Manx come into it (Not all people from these countries are or were Celts, but look up just how many have Celt heritage and you'll be surprised). The old governments are pretty much loosely linked Chiefdoms with well defined social structure.

@Truonian - I accept your point that you feel that culture groups aren't civilizations to you, seems you like to think of nations and Civilizations and fair enough. But personally I couldn't disagree more on that point. If you take out culture groups from the game, you'll have similar effects to taking them out of the history of the world, we'll be missing out on far too much.

All things said, and all the other things I can't bother reiterating - it doesn't matter anyway because there will be Celt civ mods as well as many others that people work on. I just hope they make the expansions so we can have some official content as well. If I say it over a hundred times it might come true, so I hope you'll all forgive me for bringing it up so often.

 

[Truronian]

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@Truonian - I accept your point that you feel that culture groups aren't civilizations to you, seems you like to think of nations and Civilizations and fair enough. But personally I couldn't disagree more on that point. If you take out culture groups from the game, you'll have similar effects to taking them out of the history of the world, we'll be missing out on far too much.

I think that rather than including a culture group, it should be repressented by a more Civ-like civilization, eg the Irish for the Celts, in the same way that Mali are representing Western Africa, the Iroquois represent the Native Americans, Babylon (should be) representing Mesopotamia.

Ideally (for me) the Celts would be repressented by Cornwall, but that is not gonna happen.

 

[mitsho]

But this is debatable, but you're totally wrong regarding the question of celtic civilization. Do you know the definition of a civilization? The scientific one (the one you find in a lexicon) doesn't include anything related to political situation/unification, but is solemny related to culture (and everything that includes) and science.
Ok, Firaxis uses its own definition, but still, this point is viable.

By that definition, most European "civilizations" should be eliminated in favor of a "Western Civilization". Of course, that's not going to happen.

As I said, Firaxis is making its rules and its definition which results in the fact that both France and the Celts are viable civilizations.

 

[brennan]

I doubt Firaxis has any specific 'definition' in mind when choosing which civs make it into the game; they are only slowly getting away from the selection of civs in the first game - which was most likely a list of civs Sid just thought up one day.

Somewhat more thought has clearly gone into Civ4 in these terms, but I still think you are all over-analysing.

 

[Zenon_pt]

The PORTUGUESE!!!
If there will be an Expantion pact, but put the PORTUGUESE!!!

 

[Urederra]

The Celts were, in fact, all over the continent. The Biblical Galatians were in fact a Celtic tribe. How many of you knew that?

I didn´t, But it makes sense to me. Wales in spanish is Gales, and there is a celtic region in Spain called Galicia, so their ancestors could well be that Galatian-Celtic tribe.

Galicia is close to Portugal, I wonder if there were celtic tribes in Portugal as well.

 

[Lahdoz]

It's not so bad that we get a vanilla game with limited civs (excluding mods). If we started with 100 civs, would we mod any in? I look forward to buying the expansions later, it keeps the game interesting.

 

[Granite88]

Well for one thing, putting additional civs in expansion packs is a major selling point for them. I sure loved getting the MAYA's! in civ3. Besides, what's the point of 100 civs in vanilla? That's a hell of a lot of games on random... LOL

 

[Desertsnow]

I didn´t, But it makes sense to me. Wales in spanish is Gales, and there is a celtic region in Spain called Galicia, so their ancestors could well be that Galatian-Celtic tribe.

Plus, of course, Ireland and Scotland are still called 'Gaelic' peoples.

Galicia is close to Portugal, I wonder if there were celtic tribes in Portugal as well.

The Celtiberians occupied mostly Spain, but extended somewhat into Portugal.

 

[El Santo]

I think the best approach is to simply give civilizations colors & random building/people sets. With the choice left upon the player for their color/leaderhead/building/people set. After all civ is about REWRITING history from scratch. I mean if we were to go back in time 4000 years ago something as simple as farting might destroy an entire civilization!
This would also curb ultra-nationalistic tendencies among hardcore civ gamers.
Leaderheads could be customizable for the user, random for the AI.
I sure know that the thing I usually complain about is not being able to choose my own attributes & color for my civ, what if I want red, industrial & scientific Incas? I have to go to the editor, this should be part of the game.

Alternatively but more complicated, certain civs could be available only after certain types of events, in ex. America can only form after the english colonize another place & start a civil war.

Either way, Civ 4 looks great perhaps we should stop worrying so much about which civ/culture will be included, from a certain gaming standpoint, they're all the same!