Civ VI Civ and City-State Symbology

Great work, DJ_Tanner. I like that City-States have more personality now, down to the (seemingly well-researched) icons, and the unique suzerain bonuses.

Wow, I never realised that before! Thanks.

 

Nice job !

 

This is the one I am most unsure of. Initially I did think it was a sun disk, however, something kept bothering me about it so I reviewed them quite a few times before I decided that chariot wheel just fits better.

First there is small cross beam, this is what led me to think it was a sun disk as it doesn't fit well with the chariot wheel design. However, there is only one crossing bar and the sun disk typically features this cross thatched design as a major feature, it is not major in the icon used.

Next, there is the central 'hub'. There are some designs of sun disks that utilize central disks, circles from where the lines originate. Yet these are typically used in multiples fitted all around the disk. From a wheel design there is only one the hub in the middle of the wheel from where all the spokes originate.

For me the key item was the prominence of the lines themselves. The icon has the four cardinal lines. These four are much thicker than the other lines. This is key design feature that is absent from all sun disk designs. In those all lines are of equal weight. However, in chariot wheels the major and minor spoke is a design feature.

Of additional note, they are also a scientific CS that provides a more military bonus. The chariot does represent this a bit better. As they were not only proficient with using the chariot but also made great innovations to it. Probably not that relevant, but its a thing.

Again this is my interpretation of the symbol provided. I just wanted to point out why I picked chariot wheel and why I think it is the better fit for symbol presented.

 

I guess eagles are prime real estate for civilisation icons, so they try to use it the least they could. Just in the revealed civs, we already have Russia and Poland who are highly likely to get eagles, and don't really have other symbols that could fit. And there are only so many ways to draw an eagle that's different from other eagles in the small icon size.

 

Good find. I agree with the sentiment, though, having omega as symbol is a bit weird. Personally, I'd preferred the Owl of Athena, seeing how it's still used on euro coins and fits Pericles very well.

I might actually try and mod that and the Bundesadler for Germany in, call it the "Birds of Civilisation" mod.

 

Yeah, I saw it was there, which is how I came up with the description. I just left the icon blank waiting for Arioch's site to put it up, that way the icon would be uniform with the rest.

 

Personally, I believe that the Norwegian lion, i.e. this;



would've been a better choice for Norway's symbol. But I'll excuse the choice of the valknut, as it was found on the Oseberg ship, after all.

 

Lions are like eagles: very popular with designers of country or city symbols. It is probably smart to pick something else if possible, thereby saving the animal for when there really is no other option.

 

I think you got Kabul wrong, it's clearly a pair of red high heeled shoes.

 

Exactly, the cross bars (connecting the "spokes") serve no purpose in a chariot wheel, and they aren't part of how the Hittites depicted their own chariot wheels either. They are part of the solar icon. Granted, the CS icon is more simplified in design than the original artefact, but practically all of the icons are simplified compared to the source materials.

It's a Hattic sun disk, not a wheel. Saying it's a wheel because it kinda looks like one and that it better suits the "theme" of the CS isn't really relevant because the icons represent the cities/cultures themselves, not the themes.

 

Yeah, the Omega for Greece is so bland/generic/meaningless. Giving Pericles an owl and Gorgo a lambda would make the most sense. If they only want one symbol for both leaders/all of Greece, the gorgoneion would work best as both distinctive and used throughout all of the Greek states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgoneion

 

This is great!!

 

Nice work but, you do realize some of these are from Civ V right? not VI. For example, Oda is in Civ V, that's his symbol there. You need to look into the hojo symbol, which is like this: http://www.honga.net/totalwar/shogun2/images/shogun2/flags/hojo/mon_256.png

 

Man, I find this one to be so incredibly bland for Lisbon. Sure, it can be traced to the Coat of Arms of Lisbon, but if that's what they wanted, I feel this symbol, a simplification of the coat of arms, would make much more sense. It's a rather modern symbol, used nowadays by Lisbon's Town Hall, but's a very obvious simplification of the original coat of arms, which dates way back.
Or, alternatively, they could just do the same as Stockholm and use Civ V's icon for Portugal - that'd be great too.

I guess when Portugal is added as a full civilization, they can reuse the waves for any other seaside City-State to replace Lisbon, which is nice for them. But, then again, it just shows how generic the waves are as a symbol. Either way, it's serviceable, but better choices could be made.

The thing with eagles and lions is that they were so overused in European (and some not European) Coat of Arms and/or Flags, and there's so many European civilizations, that one must be careful when choosing one of them as the symbol.
In Civ V, we ended up with three very similar eagles, and four lions (two similar on the ground looking to the left, and two similar with their front paws in the air). And this was, I believe, with some restraint from the developers from using these animals as symbols, otherwise we could have had many more. When the icons are there to easily distinguish different civilizations, having very similar looking ones (specially when small) would defeat their purpose.
Also, I disagree with the choice of the lion for Norway, since this Norway civilization is very focused on the Viking era of the nation, during which this coat of arms was not yet in use. It'd be a serviceable, maybe even good, choice if Norway, as a civ, represented the entire history of the nation, but when it's so focused on a specific time frame, using symbols from outside that time frame is counter-intuitive.

As for the color, forget it - all City States will be colored according to their type. So all mercantile CS will be gold, all military CS will be red, and so on.
As for the symbol, I'm guessing they took the horizontal layout to represent the Flag of Amsterdam, though I agree the vertical layout would be more historically significant.
Also, I think they preferred the horizontal layout to better fit the CS banner in-game. Same goes for making one cross bigger. Also to avoid having Amsterdam being the XXX City-State.

Nope, as far as we know, Japan does have the same symbol in Civ VI as it did in Civ V, even if it is now ruled by Hojo Tokimune.
Weird choice, given the leader. I also think it should be changed, but not necessarily to the Hojo Clan's symbol - who's to say Oda Nobunaga or Tokugawa won't be added as a second leader down the line? The best choice would be one that could represent all of Japan - specially since this game tries to represent Japan's history as a whole (Hojo, Samurai, Meiji Restoration, Electronics Factory), instead of just a specific era (like, say, the Sengoku period).

 

Fair enough. After all, there's a reason why the interlocked mead horns, that IIRC were found on the Jelling stones, were chosen as Denmark's symbol in Civ 5.

 

This would be best for Japan:


The imperial seal which is also on all Japanese passports. A 18 petal chrysanthemum which earlier was illegal for any job emperor to wear.

 

The Hojo symbol is also the inspiration for the Triforce in the Legend of Zelda series (as they are similar in design).

Believe it or not, when Hojo was first revealed, some Civ fans made a connection with the Zelda games.

If Japan ends up having the Hojo symbol, some would make jokes about Japan being Hyrule, which is the location of most Zelda games.

 

That seems to be a sensible explanation. But if the colour can't be helped, still they could make the crosses a bit fatter, the same size and arrange them vertically, I think. The vertical layout will cause less association with other XXX-meanings.

 

But the Valknut would have be a very good religious symbol for the Nordic pantheon.

Qould be fun to have a mod that changes most of the Civs and CS symbols by a lion or eagle symbol they used ar some moment in history, the map would be very confusing.

 

Marvelous, marvelous job!