Civ in and Civ out

[Lockesdonkey]

I said, Mali was a center of learning. Not many huge technological advances, true, but the Kings of Mali had effective telecommunications (drums carry well over the plains of West Africa), and the philosophers of Timbuktu were respected across the Muslim world.

Furthermore, one subject of Mali, Odudwa, was not Muslim. A traditional animist, he erected an idol, which was promptly burned by his Muslim half-brother. He stole his brother's Qur'an, and led a band of fellow pagans south into the jungle, to a place in modern-day Nigeria (I think) called Ife, where his people came to be known as the Yoruba. The Yoruba and their offshoots eventually were captured and sold into slavery in the New World, and most Africans in the Western Hemisphere have some Yoruba ancestors, and the Yoruba culture they brought with them has influenced the culture of the Americas; from Brazilian music to blues and jazz, the Yoruba influence remains a part of the worl's most powerful culture.

Lesson: Do not discount the importance of Mali.

And they did start the Renaissance (indirectly). Read The Cartoon History of the Universe III, Volume 18 by Larry Gonick.

 

[Avayaman]

everybody seems to overlook the ottomans turks, so i'd go for turkey. As for the number of civs, the more the merrier! as long as there are enough traits to make sure the game doesn't turn out to be redundunt and the gameplay is balanced enough not to have dumb traits.

 

[Kyriakos]

While i am not saying that Mali is a bad choice, i think that you are exagerating on its importance. It is important in world history, but not drammatically so; i mean the reneaissance would still have started if they had to get money from elsewhere, it wouldnt had started if there had been nothing to be reborn though (greek-roman antiquity). The byzantine empire had its own rennaisance without malian gold, and venice didnt need it either (although in this i am speculating, like i said i havent read anything about Mali, but it seems logical to me that a maritime trading power would prosper irregardless of the inflow of one resource, albeit an important one economically like gold).
As of culture, i wasnt aware that the "voodoo" culture was malian, that is very interesting I actually like the cultures of shadows, and it seems that the african american one is quite a bit shadowy, although they have become intergrated (and very rightly so) in a western society like the u.s.

@ avayaman: i think that (although not accurate i guess) the mongols kind of cover early turks as well, and the ottoman empire was rather late (i mean late medieval) & not particularly adding anything culture-wise. Think of it this way: there are some egyptian words in the english language (alcohol for example), but probably no turkish word at all. On the other hand there are more than 300.000 greek words in it.
The ottomans will be in an x-pack anyway

 

[Xen]

Out
1)Mongols
2)Aztecs
3)Amercia/US

In
1)Ethiopia
2)Maya
3)Siam/Khemer

 

[Xen]

While i am not saying that Mali is a bad choice, i think that you are exagerating on its importance.

the theological chopices made by islamic religous scholars whom had thie rlearning from the university of Timbuktu has to reverberations that are still felt in the islamic world to this very day, and effect the entire out look of the islamic world, and this has had both good and bad consequences on wolrd history, both old and modern.

 

[Hannabir]

Not gold was so important about Mali, IMHO, that just gave them the means, but their invention of a new way of learning: the university. Thereby, they influenced the entire world. It was as important to world history as the industrial, mercantile, seafaring and agricultural revolutions.

 

[Kyriakos]

i definately didnt know that, but:
the islamic world had many centers of learning, from bagdad to isfahan, to andalusian islam territories, to syria. Perhaps Mali was mostly just another one of those centers?

And as for the university i think that it will be very difficult for anyone to decide who built the first university and when.
First you would have to argue what would make it so different from an ancient academy, or a library. Then you would have to go through the lists of places who claim that they had the first university, and there are quite a few of them. I have come across italian towns claiming that, and then there is always the university of constantinople, which was built iirc in the 10th century AC (not sure).

But imo it isnt that important who had the first university, i mean if they discovered something then that was making knowledge spread and expand, what does it matter if they had the first university or not? On the other hand a place might not have an ancient university but have had great scientists/philosophers etc.
And i doubt that the notion of a university got to the west through Mali, it is far more probable that it got there through Italy, and got to Italy from the byz empire & the arabs, or it didnt even need to do that since there were the ancient academies.

 

[Xen]

it was a major one; islamic scholars were known to journey from all around the islamic world to learn and study thier, similer to how scholars from all over the ancient med sea, and middle eastern wordl woudl travel to ancient Alexandria to learn and study.

 

[Evie]

Varwnos - what Lockesdonkey actually should have said is that, at the time of its greatest extent, Mali was the second largest empire in the world. Compared to all nations in history, it's much further down, of course.

Before you start trying to compare with medieval kingdoms and empires, by the way, you should keep in mind that the greatest extent of Mali happens to roughly coincide with the greatest extent of another empire - an empire founded by a certain Temujin person. You may have heard of him.

 

[mitsho]

but, and that's an important thing, the real big chunk of the area was part of the sahara desert which they controlled for salt/gold/knowledge/etc.-trade. Am I right? (That's just what I think based on logic, and not on sources - can anyone confirm/condemn me? )

m

 

[Kyriakos]

Varwnos - what Lockesdonkey actually should have said is that, at the time of its greatest extent, Mali was the second largest empire in the world. Compared to all nations in history, it's much further down, of course.

Before you start trying to compare with medieval kingdoms and empires, by the way, you should keep in mind that the greatest extent of Mali happens to roughly coincide with the greatest extent of another empire - an empire founded by a certain Temujin person. You may have heard of him.

I tried to find a map of the empire of Mali, the one i found was generally small, smaller than brazil. Obviously if youa re correct i just found the wrong map. Its not as if i have something to gain if Mali had less territory than you claim it had

and infact youa re the one who is wrong:

http://www.nmafa.si.edu/educ/mali/images/mm.gif

copy/pasting from that site:

"From A.D. 700 to 1600 the ancient empires of Ghana (700-1100), Mali (800-1550) and Songhay (1300-1600) controlled vast areas of West Africa (see map and time line). Although each empire rose to assert its power, they coexisted independently for centuries. At its peak (1200-1300), the Mali Empire covered an area that encompasses significant portions of the present-day country of Mali, southern and western Mauritania and Senegal. Note that the old kingdoms of Mali and Ghana are not the present-day countries of Mali and Ghana"


So, they controlled (even if you see them as one, Ghana and Songhay) a part of western africa (vast areas of western africa ok, in other words not even the entire western africa). Now do you claim that that part of western africa is anywhere near the roman empire in size? forget the mongol empires.
As you can see in the pic even if you combine the landmass of all three empires they are rather something relative in size with the largest byzantine empire, or if they are bigger they are smaller than the united roman empire, and ofcourse they cannot be compared in size with any of the biggest in size empires the world has seen

 

[Midwinter]

Please forgive my ignorance (I'm not at all well versed in Mesoamerican history), but I notice a lot of people voting the Aztecs out and the Mayans (Maya?) in. Why is that?

 

[Nobody]

Spain out, Polynesia in. Spain is a great civ but the lesser of the europeans. And there is no civ to represent a good half of the globe (area wise)

 

[MonRiverMonarch]

Aztecs out (can't pronounce any of those 16 letter city names) and Vikings or Israel in. I like playing as the Arabs in a desert world right now, the Israelites would make it more interesting. I'd like to play as Israel or Arab.

 

[Hannabir]

Please forgive my ignorance (I'm not at all well versed in Mesoamerican history), but I notice a lot of people voting the Aztecs out and the Mayans (Maya?) in. Why is that?

The Aztecs, as an organized civilization, only existed for a very short while, during which time they did little more than enslave their neighbours, until they succumbed when the conquistadors gave their neighbours the final nudge to get rid of them. If it weren't for the Spanish, they might never have made the history books. (This is somewhat overstated, in fact they had one important contribution: hydroponics, but you get the gist of it.)

 

[Justy]

France and Mali Out

Vikings (Scandanavians) In
Ethiopians In

 

[Ramalhão]

The Aztecs, as an organized civilization, only existed for a very short while, during which time they did little more than enslave their neighbours, until they succumbed when the conquistadors gave their neighbours the final nudge to get rid of them. If it weren't for the Spanish, they might never have made the history books. (This is somewhat overstated, in fact they had one important contribution: hydroponics, but you get the gist of it.)

Bad answer. There are huge differences between all old american civilizations. When the spanish conqueror arrived in America, they saw only simple indians, saying that these people were "something more than monkeys".

And then they found Aztecs. Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote that the social organization in American people was more advanced than European at his time, having a system to concentrate a huge amount of people together. When Tenochtitlán was conquered, it was possibly the 2nd most populated city in the world, the 1st was Chang’an, in China.

Possibly the most important civilization in America was the Olmec. Nothing is written about this civilization, just archeological sites tell something. There's a huge amount of statues and temples which don't fit in Aztec and Mayan characteristics and were even older than these civs. Olmec began to decay around 600 BC and 200 AD they were gone. But it left a culture, which was assimilated and improved by later civilizations. There was a archeological site in Mexico, but Pemex destroyed it (including a huge pyramid) to get the oil in 1970's . A lot of history could be found there, possibly the center of this civilization, but the oil-hunt talks louder .

Comparing the three most known american civilizations with old mediterran civilizations:
- Incas - Ancient Egypt: Government form and religion were similars;
- Aztec - Republican Rome: Militar expansion, creation of colonies (and tributing them) and government form (Aztec was a republic, not a teocratic system);
- Mayan - Classic Greek: Mayan culture was spread for almost all continent, maybe even in Andes, and possibly this civilization used city-states, autonomous cities with same culture, influencing each other.

The Aztec empire was short, only tree centuries until spanish arrive, but it was well organized society, a strong culture, even get from Mayan (Rome got culture from Greek here too). Their only fault was not traveling to China to get gunpowder . If they had gunpowder weapons as spanish had, they wouldn't lose and possibly would exist until our days.

 

[Evie]

I tried to find a map of the empire of Mali, the one i found was generally small, smaller than brazil. Obviously if youa re correct i just found the wrong map. Its not as if i have something to gain if Mali had less territory than you claim it had

You completely misunderstood me, varwnos. I know very well they were FAR from the second largest empire EVER. What they were is the second largest empire AT THE TIME of their greatest extent, ie the late 1200s. There were larger empires at other points in time, obviously.

So no, I'm not the "one who's wrong".

As far as overall size goes - a VERY rough calculation gives me about 2 000 000 square kilometers for the Songhay empire (Songhay alone, that is) ; today, that would still be enough to put them comfortably within the top-20 of largest nations, and probably somewhere within the historical top-35 if not the top-30.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't really care which ones are in and out for the most part. I'd like to see them leave America in (and in that way, not "United States")--mainly because it seems to put a burr under a lot of peoples' saddles--people that could use some perspective. (If you get that worked up over some pixels in a game, I'm glad I never was in a history or literature class with you. On second thought, maybe I was--which is why I'm glad about the burr. )

What I'd really like to see, however, isn't going to happen in Civ4. I'd prefer it even if it would make the above mentioned people happy as well. I'd like to see nothing but ancient tribes in the ancient game, but have them evolve as the game progressed. So you really could, for example, end up with a British civ made up of various Celtic, Norse, and Latin peoples. That is, I'd like to see them distinguish tribe and civilization as first class game concepts.

Even the United States would be a lot more fun if you had to grow it instead of starting with it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Oda, that doesnt really sound important. Being in one of the 30 biggest nations in size that is, even more so if it is an african nation. Kongo is larger today than songhai back then. So what? Apart from the diamond mines Kongo is a very poor country, torn in many parts due to endless civil wars.
I even doubt that they were the second largest empire at 1200. (not that it would matter, unless you are seriously claiming that civ4 should be particularly about what empire was largest at 1200 ). It would be like claiming that an athlete should be mentioned in a book just because for a few seconds during a race he was second, and then retreated to the middle places, along with tens of other athletes of whom you make no claim that they should be mentioned in the book.
Let alone the fact that it was never clear in the first place that you had made such a strange claim about them.

ps: Algeria today is bigger than songhai as well in size, the uk on the other hand is a lot smaller, should Algeria be mentioned before the uk as a powerfull nation? etc etc etc

Let me just repeat that my own view was that Mali was an ok choice, we just dont need to present arguments like "it was the second largest empire for a period of a few years" to support such a view, because those arguments cannot support it, the 1200's werent exactly the most important era of civilization by any standard anyway, it would be very difficult to claim that they are standing out for any reason, that is that they dwarf other eras.