Our traditional definition of what a civ is, again, is very eurocentric though, so I respect the dev team’s willingness to stray from that. Like if we consider ‘civilization’ to be cultures and nations with both a writing system and settled lifestyle, you wouldn’t be able to include the Maori (no written language until contact with Brits), the Aztecs (no written language until contact with Spanish), the Inca (Used knotted ropes to convey information), the Mongols (had settlements, but were nomadic), Scythians (same) and any Hungarian leader before and including Arpad.
When modern Anthropology and History really developed as western intellectual topics, the definitions of being civilized and civilization were created to exclude who western europeans and americans considered undeveloped and backwards. So I find the traditional considerations of what defines a civilization to be problematic to some degree.
I prefer to consider this question: did a nation or culture have a significant impact in their local or international timeline.
I agree that the capability to build settlements and using agriculture are musts, if not simply for practical purposes of including them in the game (It would be quite hard to include completely traditional hunter gatherers like say, the maasai, or cultures which focused on small village settlements, like the inuit, despite the historical and cultural influences both have undoubtedly had)
But we also can’t consider what a Civ is from the traditional Eurocentric perspective, because just because there were only two (arguably 3 or 4 depending if you count the Iroquois confederacy and the Mayan city states, which at times were united) ‘Great Empires’ in the New World doesn’t mean that other Native American nations and cultures are less deserving of status, both as a civ in the game but also being recognized as a culture of merit.
I agree to some extent. The Huns shouldn't have been implemented in Civ 5 because they basically had no city names and played like a barbarian faction.
I don't think we should exclude Scythia though, which was a better improvement. Scythia at least had settlements.
As for certain Native American tribes, the more nomadic they are the harder it is to include them such as the Shoshone, Sioux, Comanche etc.
The Cree to an extent were somewhat nomadic, but not all were so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
That's the reason why I think if we do get another NA tribe it won't be a Plains culture because Poundmaker was a Plains Cree.
The Iroquois however were not nomadic and developed farming techniques so I would include them as a possible civilization, which they should. That is the same with many NA tribes on the East coast, PNW and certain tribes in the SW and SE.
In addition to the points Alexander’s Hetaroi makes above, consider the Chinook and Haida who were so skilled in ship building that they could carve canoes which, some historians believe, could’ve traveled to South America or Hawaii.
Or the Salish, Squamish or Tlingit, who in the Upper Northwest were known for their advanced ability regarding textiles, not to mention their skill in farming.
The ‘Five Civilized Tribes’, as they were contemporarily known as, would also make good civ’s, as their flexibility in organization and strong governmental development created strong, united, provincial areas which helped them survive well into the manifest destiny era of American Expansion.
And of course, the plains nations were able to build settlements with little agriculture, and were some of the most skilled mounted horse people of all time, let alone the new world. They also developed a complex religion with as much depth as the old world religions.
The idea that the native american groups we have in this game is enough is really problematic, from a historical perspective, a current events perspective and from the perspective of the game. The ‘great kingdoms’ of Europe and Asia, while some specific instances could be improved upon (cough cough Asian blob civs), are well represented in this game. While each popular civ candidate remaining in Europe and Asia is undoubtedly deserving of a spot in civ, at a certain point, what they bring to the table, while historically different, is pretty limited, and adding them anyway, ends up being a matter of personal national pride than historical deservingness. Perhaps the unrepresented European civs can appear in civ 7, but every region of europe, every major cultural/language group and every historical time period has been represented fairly well in civ 6.
In the Americas, we have 4 deserving post colonial nations representing more modern times. Whether we need all of them is a whole different argument, but these 4 nations are undoubtedly worthy. They, however, represent the colonizers.
On the other hand, in the america’s, we have only 5 nations representing the natives to the land. Among these 5, 3 should appear in every version of the game regardless (Maya, Aztec/Mexica and Inca). The other 2, while worthy representatives of their geographical regions and cultures, do not begin to represent or fill in for, all of the cultures that we’re missing out on. The Mapuche are an incredibly interesting and historical appealing story, in many ways mirroring the fight against colonialism that we see in other notable indigenous peoples, like the Maori. Likewise, the Cree have historically, and continue to, play an important role in the history of Central Canada.
They both have distinct cultures from the American peoples of the south west and Pacific northwest, which are the best candidates for a native american civ in Civ 6.
