[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

(Out of curiosity, what's the third Mesoamerican urban society you referenced? I wouldn't expect anyone who isn't a history nerd to recognize any Mesoamerican culture other than Aztec and Maya. Mixtec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Olmec, etc. aren't really common knowledge.)

He probably meant the Inca, though maybe there are the Olmecs that might be more well known than the others. I thank Nickelodeon's Legends of the Hidden Temple for that and their giant colossal talking head.
Instead of using the term Pre-Colombian, the term Mesoamerican was used. I admit I overlooked it.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

The Aztecs are famous because they were currently active when the Spaniards arrived and had a form of writing. Their empire existed for less than a century and was confined to Mexico Valley, most of which was controlled via vassal tribes rather than direct Aztec rule. That doesn't understate their achievements, but by the standards of civs featured in Civilization - and especially in the first game - they're very out of place: short-lived, with a restricted geographical distribution and almost no history of monumental architecture. Their only real lasting cultural relevance is the impact they had on the later state of Mexico. They were easily the most minor of the three most well-known Mesoamerican urban societies, but got the nod in Civ I because people knew more about the Aztecs than the Maya or Inca in the popular culture of the time - exactly the reason sub-Saharan Africa was represented by the Zulu rather than Ethiopia or Mali.



The Zulu are in Civ VI because they were in Civ I. Other than the odd omission - so far - of Babylon in Civ VI, which for some reason isn't held to be as sacrosanct as the Zulus or the Aztecs (perhaps because it's had different leader figures in each incarnation), all civs from the first game have been in all the later ones as it's a core part of the continuity that makes them Civ games rather than just random history-themed 4xes. Possibly Shaka would be the sort of 'big character' they'd have added for Civ VI even if the Zulu weren't a series staple, but that wasn't a criterion for civ inclusion in older entries in which the Zulu are present.



Not by any standard in which Mexico isn't. Australia is better-known to most of the game's intended audience because English-speaking societies with European-derived majority populations tend to get more exposure in Western media than they warrant, but that doesn't make it more significant. I lived in Australia for a few years and its own media portrays it as being at most a regional power, and often apprehensive of the bigger power next door represented by Indonesia.

the zulu continue to appear because of a function of shaka i’d argue, though their staple status may be part of the reason they keep appearing. They qualify for civ in the same way the Mapuche do: a smallish tribal civilization that are best known for fighting off colonists and have a well known, cult-of-personality leader. I’d say that out of the original 12 civs, babylon as well as the zulu and aztecs are the ones which lend themselves to rotating in and out the best. Babylon because other mesopotamian civs are just as interesting, the Zulu and Aztec because there are equally, if not, more, powerful civs yet unexplored in the area, like the Mutapa Empire in the case of the Zulu, or like @Zaarin mentioned, the Zapotec or even the Olmecs, which I believe appeared in civ 3 and never again.

That said, I think you’ve undercut the sophistication of the Triple Alliance. Tenochtitlan was larger than london, cleaner than london, and more architecturally advanced than london. the aztecs developed strategies to build floating farms and cities, after all. So while I agree that as opposed to the Inca and Maya they are less deserving, I’d argue they are still well deserving of their status as a civ staple.

In regards to Australia, I like to think that their key involvement in WWII cemented them as acceptable for civ. While I’d agree Indonesia is more dominant regionally, it’s not like Australia isn’t big enough of a world power to be in civ. Like @Alexander's Hetaroi said, the fact that the aboriginal australians can’t be in the game as it stands makes it much easier for Australia to be in the game, even if Mexico as a civ itself is perfectly acceptable to be in the game.

In regards to Babylon, ideally i’d like to see two of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria with one of the Hittites or Elam, which were mesopotamian-adjacent ancient civilizations which are really interesting to me, and since we already have Sumer, I wouldn’t mind seeing Assyria over the Babylonians in this iteration if it means we can get the Hittites or Elam as well

Then suggest 10 Civ Abilities in one sentence that has enough nuance that it will make you feel like you will play the game differently, rather than feeling like you start with free Social Policy/Policy Card.

This. You need two abilities for depth without getting confusing. Less and civs don’t have nuance. More and the game gets clunky. One civ and one leader ability works well because you also get leader flavor in there

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Babylon because other mesopotamian civs are just as interesting, the Zulu and Aztec because there are equally, if not, more, powerful civs yet unexplored in the area, like the Mutapa Empire in the case of the Zulu, or like @Zaarin mentioned, the Zapotec or even the Olmecs, which I believe appeared in civ 3 and never again.

The Zapotec or Olmecs never appeared in Civ 3. That was the Hittites that appeared and then disappeared. The Olmecs are difficult to put in because we don't even know the name of a single leader they had, let alone I think the language.

 

[BuchiTaton]

What do you mean as "represent proper China"??

The same you are saying, the core region of China, with Han culture and most of the"legitimism" dynasties.

What do you mean as "represent proper China"??
As I said in the previous post, in each time phases, there is at most one "legitimism" Chinese dynasties (none for some period) and the other is consider as Empire built up by the foreigner around/in China region. Tufan is one of the example of "foreigner" empire that is NEVER consider as one of the China dynasties, insisting to use it as alt leader of China will surely end up with huge outrage in China, as it contradict the historical view of China. In my view, it is even better to split it as separate civ but the only consideration is the political issue that it may involved(as others said before)

Who said something about put any tibetan figure as chinese alternative leader, nobody is saying that? I was talking about a possible CIV 7 where there are not compromise on a civ named CHINA. "Chinese" on the context that the land of Tibet is now part of contemporary China. Have one civ named CHINA and other named TIBET could be considered problematic. If we use both "legatimism" and "foreigner" dynasties names for the representation of China and Tibet, there are not such obvious political problem since Han and Tufan turn to be something from the past.

So, well if Jin and Qing are a problem, we still have the option of the not so chinese Jurchen or Manchu?
But NO, because two reasons, fear of censure and the notion that Jurchen/Manchu are irrelevant (but Cree and Shoshone are so relevant!!!)

And please I dont need the excuse that native tribes are options for different gameplay, on game those civs have design that could work on X number of any other civs. There are not a real difference on magnitude of gameplay of mechanics between two european civs and any of those to a native civ, all civs are mainly simetric beyond any historical basis.

Native tribes to bully and pretend anglo colonial nations had somebody that could have give them real resistence is OK!
We must fill all that land on North America, but Siberia and Central Asia is for sure small and lacking of history.
Celts+France/England, England+Scotland, Rome and Greece + Byzantium, Macedon, Hittite+Ottoman, Rome+Venice, Germany+HRE, those are just mistakes that we can ignore.

 

[PhilBowles]

Geographically wise Australia does have the advantage of not also having competition against native indigenous people, because it would basically be impossible to depict an Aboriginal people, unlike Mexico with the Aztecs and Maya, which to me are more appealing.

The closest thing Australia has are the Maori, which doesn't even matter because they are just as capable to sell east to South America.

In game terms I regard that as a strike against Australia. On a TSL map you probably want an area like Australia that's empty for other civs to fight over, since by the nature of TSL everywhere else is at least partially occupied. For the Australians themselves it's an uninteresting starting position, with no close neighbours and limited areas to expand outside Australia itself.

While I agree that the Maya should be the base game Mesoamerican civ, I wouldn't undersell the importance of the Aztecs. Tenochtitlan was one of the largest, cleanest, most sophisticated cities in the world at its time. The Aztec were wealthy, stable, and regionally powerful--and far more centralized than any other Mesoamerican polity, even Mayapan, despite lacking proper writing (Aztec "writing" was proto-writing). I wouldn't mind if the Aztec set out one game to give a chance to include other Mesoamerican nations like the Mixtec or Zapotec--and the Maya absolutely deserve to be the base game staple--but the Aztec definitely deserve to be regularly included. (Out of curiosity, what's the third Mesoamerican urban society you referenced? I wouldn't expect anyone who isn't a history nerd to recognize any Mesoamerican culture other than Aztec and Maya. Mixtec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Olmec, etc. aren't really common knowledge.)

I'd meant Meso- and South American, sorry, so indeed including the Inca. Though I'd hope people have at least heard of the Olmec and Teotihuacan.

Plus, of course, I am a history nerd, just not for that region.

the zulu continue to appear because of a function of shaka i’d argue,

Until Firaxis decided to start shoving them down people's throats with Civ V I don't know that anyone cared about leaders - the civ was the leader or, in Civ IV, the option to have different leaders was just a way to vary the bonuses available to a specific civ. I certainly never previously paid much attention to their identity, and while people were waiting on the Zulu in Civ V the question was "Where are the Zulu?", not "Where's Shaka?"

Civ VI is the only game in which Firaxis have made it explicit that 'big personalities', in their words, are a selection criterion.

Tenochtitlan was larger than london, cleaner than london, and more architecturally advanced than london.

Something which means less and less as we learn more about how large communities from Cahokia to Angkor were. London simply wasn't as exceptional for its time as was supposed a couple of decades ago, it's just used as the benchmark because it was perhaps the largest Western European city (and anyone who's spent time in England as well as other countries will know that even today the English don't exhibit much in the way of civic pride - most cities I'm familiar with from the developing world are cleaner than London even today, as judged by littering). There, again, Tenochtitlan is something of an artefact - we have witnesses who wrote about it at its height, which we don't for many other places which may well have been, at least, more closely comparable than presently recognised.

Yet again, though, I'm not downplaying the achievements of the Aztecs - I think people just aren't appreciating how different having a clean city and floating farms are in terms of significance from the achievements of major civilisations, both those in Civ I and those the Aztecs were included over. If you want to represent the Aztecs for their single powerful city and associated unique improvement then in Civ VI terms they're a city state.

In regards to Australia, I like to think that their key involvement in WWII cemented them as acceptable for civ.

In a way, Mexico was vicariously responsible for the US entering WWI (the Zimmerman Telegram being more significant than the sinking of the Lusitania in bringing America into the war)...

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

In game terms I regard that as a strike against Australia. On a TSL map you probably want an area like Australia that's empty for other civs to fight over, since by the nature of TSL everywhere else is at least partially occupied. For the Australians themselves it's an uninteresting starting position, with no close neighbours and limited areas to expand outside Australia itself.

Scotland, England and Indonesia I believe have worse starting positions on TSL.

At least Australia wants to be along coasts and deserts for their abilities.

 

[Zaarin]

Though I'd hope people have at least heard of the Olmec and Teotihuacan.

I really wouldn't count on that. If anything, people may have heard of the Zapotec because the US has a decent-sized Zapotec diaspora, especially in California, and I've seen a handful of Mexican restaurants that describe their dishes as "Zapotec-style."

 

[PhilBowles]

Scotland, England and Indonesia I believe have worse starting positions on TSL.

At least Australia wants to be along coasts and deserts for their abilities.

I don't mean the quality of the land available (Scotland can have an atrocious TSL start if either Norway or England is in the game. England at least gets the best part of the island and Norway gets to expand on the mainland), I mean in terms of the start being uninteresting - if you're Australia it's too easy to expand to fill up Australia but not very rewarding to go beyond it. If you're Scotland you can have a tough start but have most of the world immediately available once you have Sailing, and likely other civs to interact with from pretty much the start. Also, a difficult start can itself be interesting (as I found, for instance, with Arabia, which has access to no mountains and barely any hills).

Australia combines the least interesting type of early start - an unchallenged easy expansion - with the least interesting later game expansion - tedious crawls through the sea and hopping across generally low-quality islands, at a game stage when the latter is boring rather than actually challenging.

 

[The Kingmaker]

I’d love it if FXS found a way to properly integrate the shortlist of worthy civs whose lack of available language and leader have heretofore made them untenable.

Cahokia, the Minoans and the Olmecs come to mind. The first two could be fudged a little bit with later languages I suppose, but who wants to see the equivalent of Arabic-speaking Ramses again?

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I’d love it if FXS found a way to properly integrate the shortlist of worthy civs whose lack of available language and leader have heretofore made them untenable.

Cahokia, the Minoans and the Olmecs come to mind. The first two could be fudged a little bit with later languages I suppose, but who wants to see the equivalent of Arabic-speaking Ramses again?

the Ainu are a lesser version of this, i bet the could probably find someone but it might be hard

as for the poorly attested-to civ question, perhaps the best way would to make a middle ground between city states and full civs, like a minor civ situation.

Alternatively, they could do something and call them lost civilizations where they’re like city states but easy to incorporate into your civ as they are remnants of former nations

 

[Abaxial]

I see I missed about fifteen pages of this thread ...

If you want to fill in a bit of the gap in Africa, then I return to my suggestion of Orange Free State, with all its advantages. As various people posted, lots of civs committed bad things in their history, so the Boers are hardly uniquely bad.

About Bulgaria - I should just pass on a little story. A couple of friends of mine met a woman who was a passionate Bulgarian nationalist. The Bulgarians, she claimed, were responsible for every good thing that ever happened in history. My friends said, well, what about the Ancient Greeks and their scientific and cultural developments? "Hah!" said the woman. "They were just proto-Bulgarians!"

 

[Zaarin]

If you want to fill in a bit of the gap in Africa, then I return to my suggestion of Orange Free State, with all its advantages.

Considering they'd start practically on top of Shaka, I'm not sure what gap they'd fill.

A couple of friends of mine met a woman who was a passionate Bulgarian nationalist. The Bulgarians, she claimed, were responsible for every good thing that ever happened in history. My friends said, well, what about the Ancient Greeks and their scientific and cultural developments? "Hah!" said the woman. "They were just proto-Bulgarians!"

I think I went to college with her.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I see I missed about fifteen pages of this thread ...

If you want to fill in a bit of the gap in Africa, then I return to my suggestion of Orange Free State, with all its advantages. As various people posted, lots of civs committed bad things in their history, so the Boers are hardly uniquely bad.

About Bulgaria - I should just pass on a little story. A couple of friends of mine met a woman who was a passionate Bulgarian nationalist. The Bulgarians, she claimed, were responsible for every good thing that ever happened in history. My friends said, well, what about the Ancient Greeks and their scientific and cultural developments? "Hah!" said the woman. "They were just proto-Bulgarians!"

For Africa, I think after Ethiopia if the devs want to add more Civs, I think a Swahili blob, Zimbabwe, Ashanti, Dahomey, Morocco/Berbers, or Benin should come first. I really don't want any more colonial/post-colonial nations. Especially not for Africa.

Someone also posed the question of how your list would change if we had two "Frontier Passes". For me, quite a bit actually. My best case scenario for the current Frontier Pass, based on what we know, would be Maya, Gran Colombia, Ethiopia, Portugal, Byzantium, Babylon, Austria, and the Cherokee, plus William of Orange as an alternate Dutch leader.

However, if we have two passes, that changes things. For the first pass, I'd want to see the Maya, Gran Colombia, Ethiopia, Portugal, Babylon, Cherokee, Thailand/Sukhothai, Byzantium, and William of Orange as a Dutch leader. In the second pass, I'd like to see the Iroquois, Austria, Italy, a Swahili Civ, Vietnam/Burma, Assyria, a Western-North American Civ (think Apache, Sioux, Navajo, or Chinook), Celts/Gaul, and an Egyptian alternate leader. Normally, I wouldn't be too happy with Italy or the Celts if it meant that we'd miss out on say, Austria, a Native American Civ, or Babylon. However, if we'd get two packs, I'd be super happy to see those in the game. I guess it's just an order of priority.

 

[Kwami]

I'd meant Meso- and South American, sorry, so indeed including the Inca. Though I'd hope people have at least heard of the Olmec and Teotihuacan.

Honestly, outside of the southwest part of the US, you'll be lucky to find too many people that have even heard of the Aztecs or Maya, never mind the Olmec or any of the smaller ones. That history just isn't taught in most of the US. The curricula ten to focus on Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and occasionally East Asia. You know, the whole "Egypt to America through Greece, Rome, the HRE, and the UK" thing. Plus more America.

 

[Zaarin]

Honestly, outside of the southwest part of the US, you'll be lucky to find too many people that have even heard of the Aztecs or Maya

You're right it's not taught in history, but the Aztecs and Maya have pop culture cred.

 

[Grand-Admiral Thrawn]

After reading the past few pages, I’d like to add that with China, all of the different dynasties existed at different times, and all claimed the same Mandate of Heaven, lead the (mostly) same people, and would be great for alternate leaders. India’s history is very different from China, and the two shouldn’t be linked in the ‘historical/modern’ nations issue. With India, having the Mauryans, Chola, etc., along with maybe a modern India seems like the way to go if Firaxis isn’t too concerned with ignorant westerners.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

If you want to fill in a bit of the gap in Africa, then I return to my suggestion of Orange Free State, with all its advantages. As various people posted, lots of civs committed bad things in their history, so the Boers are hardly uniquely bad.

South Africa is hardly the problem with the Zulu and Kongo. And I'm pretty sure the closest thing to modern Africa we might get would be Ethiopia.

Normally, I wouldn't be too happy with Italy or the Celts if it meant that we'd miss out on say, Austria, a Native American Civ, or Babylon. However, if we'd get two packs, I'd be super happy to see those in the game. I guess it's just an order of priority.

I'm pretty sure Scotland is intended to be the "Celts" replacement this time around, or the start of the tradition to break up the "Celtic" blob. Gaul might be probable though only if there happens to be a second pass as Scotland isn't really portrayed as being "Celtic" influenced at all.

You're right it's not taught in history, but the Aztecs and Maya have pop culture cred.

Thanks to Apocalypto.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

After reading the past few pages, I’d like to add that with China, all of the different dynasties existed at different times, and all claimed the same Mandate of Heaven, lead the (mostly) same people, and would be great for alternate leaders. India’s history is very different from China, and the two shouldn’t be linked in the ‘historical/modern’ nations issue. With India, having the Mauryans, Chola, etc., along with maybe a modern India seems like the way to go if Firaxis isn’t too concerned with ignorant westerners.

It would be cool if China got some bonus each time era change to represent the dynastic cycle rather than a quite boring +10% Eurka/insperation bonus. Maybe each era you would be able to pick one out of like 10 bonuses but you can only pick each bonus once and it only last for that era.

 

[Zaarin]

Thanks to Apocalypto.

I didn't say their pop culture image was accurate. Pop culture images rarely are.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I’d love it if FXS found a way to properly integrate the shortlist of worthy civs whose lack of available language and leader have heretofore made them untenable.

Cahokia, the Minoans and the Olmecs come to mind. The first two could be fudged a little bit with later languages I suppose, but who wants to see the equivalent of Arabic-speaking Ramses again?

Well for the Olmecs we can just go back to what I said earlier about the giant talking colossal head from The Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Bu realistically it would be hard to implement and it's at least nice to see them as city-states/minor nations. I think it would be easier to implement some of them in like a Mythology spinoff game, but that's a whole new topic.