CIV 7 issues raised by a Native American

[Barbarian King]

I do feel I need to point out, once again, that the idea of one culture "ascending" to another, is largely very euro-centric. Normans, Visigoths and Gauls may not exist any longer, but the Shawnee still do. Assyrians still do. The only reason Mauryans don't exist any longer is because they were a dynasty, not a national identity.

That's another thing: national identity is a very recent concept, so there's something to be said about how playing as a unified people before the invention of nationalism, is apocryphal to the point of the game series misinforming the masses about human history. Perhaps there should really only be one playable civilization: the human civilization, and the player should act more as a literal god than a political leader

Cultures transitioning is something that can be found the world over. The Shawnee and Assyrians both came from previous cultures that don't exist any longer. And national identity is not a recent concept. It is in fact an ancient concept attested to throughout history. What is recent, nationalism, is the idea that a nation should be represented by a state and that a state should represent a nation. And even that idea has ancient antecedents. It is perfectly reasonably for a history themed game to include the concepts of cultural transition and national identity, as both of these have been a significant part of history.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Cultures transitioning is something that can be found the world over. The Shawnee and Assyrians both came from previous cultures that don't exist any longer. And national identity is not a recent concept. It is in fact an ancient concept attested to throughout history. What is recent, nationalism, is the idea that a nation should be represented by a state and that a state should represent a nation. And even that idea has ancient antecedents. It is perfectly reasonably for a history themed game to include the concepts of cultural transition and national identity, as both of these have been a significant part of history.

Again people keep trying to point to this "culture transitioning" being found everywhere but then keep presenting weak historical justifications for the mechanics the devs presented us.

First, I think getting into Tribal relations and history is opening a whole can of worms. The Shawnee's history was unwritten and its oral traditions and langauge group link it to the Algoniquian, which spanned a large region and historians and archelogist debate whether they actually decesended from people previously documented living in the region or if they intrusively arrived after and conquered and assimilated or with their being no definitive consensus and the trasition into Assyria you are referring to was literally Neolitic and Assyrians still exist today.

The reality is most cultures don't transition in the way the devs are trying to abstract without conflict, subjugation, assimilation, civil war, etc, etc

 

[Gedemon]

Again people keep trying to point to this "culture transitioning" being found everywhere but then keep presenting weak historical justifications for the mechanics the devs presented us.

First, I think getting into Tribal relations and history is opening a whole nother can of worms. The Shawnee's history was unwritten and its oral traditions and langauge group link it to the Algoniquian, which spanned a large region and historians and archelogist debate whether they actually decesended from people previously documented living in the region or if they intrusively arrived after and conquered and assimilated or with their being no definitive consensus and the trasition into Assyria you are referring to was literally Neolitic and Assyrians still exist today.

The reality is most cultures don't transition in the way the devs are trying to abstract without conflict, subjugation, assimilation, civil war, etc, etc

I do think, if it's only as moddable as civ6, that this version with this feature has the potential to be the most immersive Civilization game ever.

 

[bv98132454]

I'm very curious to see how Firaxis gets around the CCP censors with this system. I can't imagine they'd like not having China be in the entire game. I wonder how they'd react to a Aksum -> China -> America game, or perhaps a China -> Japan -> Korea game. I don't think those would go over particularly well.

This might be the first time I hope the CCP censors get their way, because I want this system gone. However, my guess is that Firaxis will just treat China differently from every other Civ and have different dynasties they can change to, and those are the only options they can change to.

 

[AriochIV]

Someone is going to be offended no matter what you do. Firaxis would do well to focus on the expectations of players, and not activists.

It would probably also help not to virtue signal in their marketing that these groups are being presented "correctly" and that they're the only ones doing it.

 

[TheGrayFox]

I do think, if it's only as moddable as civ6, that this version with this feature has the potential to be the most immersive Civilization game ever.

I would agree. I think there is a way to make the civ change at each age mechanic work in the game without ruining people's immersive experiences (I still don't know how i feel about ages seperating game into three distinct campaigns) but the implentation we've been showcased from Firaxis leaves alot to be desired and their historical justifications for the abstraction quickly falls apart

Here's hoping they immediately give modders access to toolkit to properly and quickly address these concerns

 

[Krikkit1]

I think a key feature that would make it workable is if certain non gameplay aspects of the previous civ remain.

1. Civ Name... instead of just America its Shawnee America or Norman America or Qin-Shawnee-America (3 means it gets somewhat unwieldy, but not too much)

2. City Names... a Player should be presented with the Option to Rename cities on entering a new Era (Capital Y/N, Others Y/N... and Future cities should have all previous name lists available.. Let Settlement Default Name your capital.... so if you are the Qin Shawnee America, a new city has a Qin, a Shawnee, and an "American" name.

3. City Graphics.. some of the "generic buildings" in the Urban districts should come from your earlier eras (ie buildings with "Historic Architecture") So QSA cities would have a few Ancient Qin buildings, a few Exploration Shawnee buildings, and te rest modern American style.
[and any Gameplay building... particularly uniques.. should keep the style it was built in]

That would mean that a Shawnee-America civ or a Roman-Norman civ or Egypt-Inca-Brazil civ would be recognizable in terms of what the History was....
So that you Could interpret it as ...
new civilization invaded and the old is a minority pop mostly in the history books
OR
Our people took out culture and in a time of crisis we adapted, keeping the best of our traditions and coming up with new solutions for the brave new world we find ourselves in.

 

[Paisley_Trees]

I think a key feature that would make it workable is if certain non gameplay aspects of the previous civ remain.

1. Civ Name... instead of just America its Shawnee America or Norman America or Qin-Shawnee-America (3 means it gets somewhat unwieldy, but not too much)

2. City Names... a Player should be presented with the Option to Rename cities on entering a new Era (Capital Y/N, Others Y/N... and Future cities should have all previous name lists available.. Let Settlement Default Name your capital.... so if you are the Qin Shawnee America, a new city has a Qin, a Shawnee, and an "American" name.

3. City Graphics.. some of the "generic buildings" in the Urban districts should come from your earlier eras (ie buildings with "Historic Architecture") So QSA cities would have a few Ancient Qin buildings, a few Exploration Shawnee buildings, and te rest modern American style.
[and any Gameplay building... particularly uniques.. should keep the style it was built in]

That would mean that a Shawnee-America civ or a Roman-Norman civ or Egypt-Inca-Brazil civ would be recognizable in terms of what the History was....
So that you Could interpret it as ...
new civilization invaded and the old is a minority pop mostly in the history books
OR
Our people took out culture and in a time of crisis we adapted, keeping the best of our traditions and coming up with new solutions for the brave new world we find ourselves in.

I love these suggestions and I hope someone at Firaxis sees them! I don't know much about game development, but 1 and 2 seem like easy enough to implement and actually improve gameplay/immersion. It would make each game you play so much more unique and dynamic too.

 

[durfal]

2. City Names... a Player should be presented with the Option to Rename cities on entering a new Era (Capital Y/N, Others Y/N... and Future cities should have all previous name lists available.. Let Settlement Default Name your capital.... so if you are the Qin Shawnee America, a new city has a Qin, a Shawnee, and an "American" name.

If lets say I want to play the Netherlands (if in the game) in the exploration age, I probably start in the Antiquity as the Goths (with their wonder we've seen) because they would probably be the only Germanic civ in that age.
I would rename every city I founded immediate to a Dutch one. Then I would want to keep the names I gave them to not loose immersion and when I went on to the modern age I would still go on renaming new cities into Dutch ones.
So this is a realy good suggestion and hope will be picked up (or it is already a feature we don't know about yet).

Or even better when transitioning to a new age, choose a new civ and its bonussus, but give the option to keep it's name! Would solve a lot of problems.

 

[Thormodr]

I do think, if it's only as moddable as civ6, that this version with this feature has the potential to be the most immersive Civilization game ever.

Agreed. I do think 7 has great potential if the modders are allowed to work their magic.

 

[HNation]

This would be like me complaining that the Celts in the Civ franchise always represent the ancient Celts and never the modern Irish, and that there's a potential to have Victoria leading the Celts in Civ 7. Man, I miss a time before all of this hyper-sensitivity stuff was mainstream.

 

[HNation]

Why are such topics always only an issue if a native American speaks up? The discrimination according to ethnic group is really annoying.

The USA also doesn't want to be ruled by Queen Victoria, what about the independence wars? And the Chinese don't want to be ruled by Genghis Khan, they will be livid.

I think combining civ & leader freely should be a game option as in civ 6 but they should not be standard.

I definitely prefer civs and leaders to match, but I haven't heard any Americans complaining that you could have the USA ruled by Queen Victoria in Civ 6. Have you heard of "the boy who cried wolf" from Aesop's Fables? Some groups tend to complain about this kind of stuff more than others, so they are more likely to have people tune it out when they do.

 

[RandV]

Again people keep trying to point to this "culture transitioning" being found everywhere but then keep presenting weak historical justifications for the mechanics the devs presented us.

First, I think getting into Tribal relations and history is opening a whole can of worms. The Shawnee's history was unwritten and its oral traditions and langauge group link it to the Algoniquian, which spanned a large region and historians and archelogist debate whether they actually decesended from people previously documented living in the region or if they intrusively arrived after and conquered and assimilated or with their being no definitive consensus and the trasition into Assyria you are referring to was literally Neolitic and Assyrians still exist today.

The reality is most cultures don't transition in the way the devs are trying to abstract without conflict, subjugation, assimilation, civil war, etc, etc

Yeah I haven't really gotten into the discussion yet but had been wondering that with the Civ VII talk about civilizations/cultures changing over time, human history can be brutal and a lot of times its not so much 'changed' as it is conquered/destroyed/subjugated/etc and new people move in.

In regards to the America's, it's actually a special case as disease wiped out an estimated 95% of the population before Europeans started moving at the time having no idea what actually happened.

 

[Krikkit1]

The reality is most cultures don't transition in the way the devs are trying to abstract without conflict, subjugation, assimilation, civil war, etc, etc

Which is why there’s only a change with a crisis.

However, that is Also why it’s important to show that the previous identity is not just erased but to show the previous identity existing in the new one. If Shawnee-> America, the Shawnee presence should be visible.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

A lot of this discussion wouldn't even need to be had if the developers had only made the Shawnee an Industrial Age civ, as they should have been in the first place

 

[UWHabs]

A lot of this discussion wouldn't even need to be had if the developers had only made the Shawnee an Industrial Age civ, as they should have been in the first place

People are certainly making some assumptions. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they decided to have the Navajo, for example, as a modern Native American nation, and the "default" progression for the Shawnee is to the Navajo. Now, granted, obviously that would cause a whole other storm of "not all tribes are the same", but probably arguments similar to the arguments over Egypt->Songhai, rather than some of the assimilation/colonialization talk.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Which is why there’s only a change with a crisis.

However, that is Also why it’s important to show that the previous identity is not just erased but to show the previous identity existing in the new one. If Shawnee-> America, the Shawnee presence should be visible.

Shawnee should never go into United States and having a few tee pees mixed among New York skyscrapers isn't going to change the fact that this nation I built now suddenly speaks American English, name their cities after American ones, use American units, and archietecture and the Shawnee have been all but wiped up.

Yes we get that civ swapping was designed around the arbiratrary crisis mechanic that happens to all civilizations at the same time before the end of a game round but thats not what many of us want from the Civilization series. We want to build Civilizations/empires that span the test of time! Not civilizations/empires which are essentially wiped out by others in arbitrary crisises between game rounds.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I definitely prefer civs and leaders to match, but I haven't heard any Americans complaining that you could have the USA ruled by Queen Victoria in Civ 6. Have you heard of "the boy who cried wolf" from Aesop's Fables? Some groups tend to complain about this kind of stuff more than others, so they are more likely to have people tune it out when they do.

I must have missed the part where Queen Victoria could lead America in Civ 6?
As far as I know there's only Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Shawnee should never go into United States and having a few tee pees mixed among New York skyscrapers isn't going to change the fact that this nation I built now speaks American English, name their cities after American ones, use American units, and archietecture and the Shawnee have been all but wiped up.

Well, a counterpoint to this is that many places in the U.S. are named after the various Native American words, such as states, cities, towns, rivers etc.
I'm not going to agree that this makes it right for them to potentially evolve into the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a reason why.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Well, a counterpoint to this is that many places in the U.S. are named after the various Native American words, such as states, cities, towns, rivers etc.
I'm not going to agree that this makes it right for them to potentially evolve into the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a reason why.

Yeah the United States quite literally colonized and genocided these Native groups and then named football teams and summer camps after them

 

[Krikkit1]

Shawnee should never go into United States and having a few tee pees mixed among New York skyscrapers isn't going to change the fact that this nation I built now suddenly speaks American English, name their cities after American ones, use American units, and archietecture and the Shawnee have been all but wiped up.

Yes we get that civ swapping was designed around the arbiratrary crisis mechanic that happens to all civilizations at the same time before the end of a game round but thats not what many of us want from the Civilization series. We want to build Civilizations/empires that span the test of time! Not civilizations/empires which are essentially wiped out by others in arbitrary crisises between game rounds.

Who says they speak american English?
Also, Shawnee living in teepees is itself offensive.

Probably US won’t be their only option…but if a human or AI Shawnee Player chose to go US, then having that tie to history would

1. Not imply the people are gone (they are not)

2. Allow human players to interpret the civ change as they wish (genocide/ conquest and replace the elite / an internally driven change in response to the crisis)

3. Help all human players in the game maintain an anchor (this civ is in that part of the map was my friend/enemy,etc.)