[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Zaarin]

I meant geographically, not culturally. Physically, the plains have a lot more room to work with than the NE.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: TSL is a fine reason to consider a civ, but it's a very poor reason to exclude one. (If the East, Southwest, and Northwest are out, I'd still take a Plateau civ over a Plains civ. At least it wouldn't be 100% another horse-raider civ. Plus Poundmaker has the Plains adequately covered IMO.)

 

[TeddyMain]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: TSL is a fine reason to consider a civ, but it's a very poor reason to exclude one. (If the East, Southwest, and Northwest are out, I'd still take a Plateau civ over a Plains civ. At least it wouldn't be 100% another horse-raider civ. Plus Poundmaker has the Plains adequately covered IMO.)

I'm not saying its a reason to exclude the Iroquois, I'm just saying that its a factor that makes them less likely to be chosen over a another native civ in a poorly represented area.

 

[Zaarin]

I'm not saying its a reason to exclude the Iroquois, I'm just saying that its a factor that makes them less likely to be chosen over a another native civ in a poorly represented area.

Maybe, but if my choices are the Iroquois or the Sioux, I'll take the Iroquois in a heartbeat. (In general, I think people here overestimate how much Firaxis cares about TSL.) I certainly wouldn't take them as a given, but I think the Iroquois stand a chance as a very safe choice.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

The city art and Cree player colors are 100% Haida. They're referred to as Haida in the code. The civ icon, it turns out, is a case of horrible research on Firaxis' part. It certainly looks Haida, but it's a mask made by a modern Cree artist in imitation of Tsimshian transformation masks. Good job, Firaxis. But I think the evidence points toward the Cree being the Haida until fairly late in the development process.

Eh I see some Cree in the building style as well, particularly how the rooftops mimic the Cree Cultural Institute. Perhaps they attempted a sort of hybrid that they intended to use for both the Cree and the Haida. The same way they tried to assign building styles to civs in other regions.

That icon is pretty damning, though.

Speaking of being close to the Cree, the Shawnee were the Cree's next door neighbors and spoke a language very closely related to Cree. Despite his personal appeal as a leader, I'd prefer to see some linguistic diversity; if we're going to have another Algonquian civ I think it should either be an Eastern tribe (like the Powhatan or Massachusetts) or a Plains tribe (the Blackfoot, Arapaho, or Cheyenne), either of which would be much further removed from the Cree.

Agreed. Preferably no Algonquin civ at all. Would prefer something Apachean or Muscogean or Iroquoian.

Then a Plains tribe is the only option because the Plains tribes were the only ones to wear the feathered war bonnets. Personally the Chilkat blankets, wooden hats, and cedar bark clothing of the PNW or the toplock and roach of the Northeast would be just as interesting.

The Apache used feathers here and there and Geronimo had himself a war bonnet.

 

[Zaarin]

That icon is pretty damning, though.

When @Eagle Pursuit showed me the mask it was based on, it struck me as very PNW so I did some digging. I was pretty appalled at how easy it was to find that it was a modern mask based on Northwest style. That's really awkward for Firaxis...

The Apache used feathers here and there and Geronimo had himself a war bonnet.

I should have said Plains or Plains-adjacent; the feathered bonnets were also used by tribes that practiced Plains lifestyles in adjacent regions in the Plateau and Great Basin.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Random thought:

We know Africa is one of the hardest regions to fill out with actual civs, hence why we have been getting a lot of city-states to represent runners-up and flesh out the map: Antananarivo, Fez, Kumasi, Ngazargamu, Taruga, Zanzibar.

We can also expect that we won't get much more civ-wise on the continent, but we could feasibly get a fair number of other city-states: Ife, Pretoria, Shona, Mogadishu/Merca, etc.

And yet we don't have an African or African-ish civ with city-state bonuses....seems like pretty clear design space if you ask me.

Maybe we might in fact get a Berber civ with CS ally bonuses or an Omani/Kilwa civ with CS trading bonuses...

EDIT: Other random thought. All of the CS UIs provide culture/tourism, faith, and gold bonuses. It would be nice to get CS's with scientific/industrial UIs.

 

[pokiehl]

The whole "Cree replaced the Haida last minute" theory is baseless speculation. While there is a small remnant of the Haida in the code (as there is for Genoa in the base game), the Cree are NOT referred to as the Haida in the code as someone above suggested. They're decisively CIVILIZATION_CREE.

Also, the icon is 100% Cree as demonstrated by @Eagle Pursuit 2 years ago: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r-f-almost-included-the-haida.629447/#post-15055099

Do you really think a AAA game development team with highly skilled artists couldn't do a quick icon change if they had to quickly pivot from Haida to the Cree? And if that were the case, then how on earth could they have gotten the voice acting and modeling for Poundmaker done but not have enough time to do a simple icon? Makes no sense.

So there is nothing to indicate any sort of scramble or misstep with the Cree iconography.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

The whole "Cree replaced the Haida last minute" theory is baseless speculation. While there is a small remnant of the Haida in the code (as there is for Genoa in the base game), the icon is 100% Cree as demonstrated by @Eagle Pursuit 2 years ago: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r-f-almost-included-the-haida.629447/#post-15055099

Do you really think a AAA game development team with highly skilled artists couldn't do a quick icon change if they had to quickly pivot from Haida to the Cree?

So there is nothing to indicate any sort of scramble or misstep with the Cree iconography.

Oh yeah I am still of the opinion that the change was pretty early given how Cree the architecture and mechanics look, and the fact that icon replacement is extremely easy.

I still think that Zaarin agrees with me that the icon, switched out or not, seems pretty lazy.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The city art and Cree player colors are 100% Haida. They're referred to as Haida in the code. The civ icon, it turns out, is a case of horrible research on Firaxis' part. It certainly looks Haida, but it's a mask made by a modern Cree artist in imitation of Tsimshian transformation masks. Good job, Firaxis. But I think the evidence points toward the Cree being the Haida until fairly late in the development process.

As stated above both the Cree and Haida are in the code for the first expansion separately. There are actually eleven civs in the code with both Nubia and Khmer, who obviously got taken out and put in DLC earlier. Of course somewhere along the line they decided to go with the Cree over the Haida, for some reason, and never developed the Haida part any further.

I'm not too sure on the city architecutre because to me it just seems a mishmash of many different native cultures, as Cahokia has the same architectural style. I presume if we get another NA tribe they would get the same.

Maybe we might in fact get a Berber civ with CS ally bonuses or an Omani/Kilwa civ with CS trading bonuses...

You mean like Zanzibar?

 

[Zaarin]

The whole "Cree replaced the Haida last minute" theory is baseless speculation. While there is a small remnant of the Haida in the code (as there is for Genoa in the base game), the Cree are NOT referred to as the Haida in the code as someone above suggested. They're decisively CIVILIZATION_CREE.

It is not "baseless speculation." The Haida are referenced in the code. The civ's colors and art style are clearly Haida. It is quite clear that the civilization that became the Cree was originally intended to be the Haida, and it's reasonable to assume that the Haida, for whatever reason, declined or that Firaxis hit some other roadblock to their inclusion.

Also, the icon is 100% Cree as demonstrated by @Eagle Pursuit 2 years ago: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r-f-almost-included-the-haida.629447/#post-15055099

Well, let's generously call it 75% Cree.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

The whole "Cree replaced the Haida last minute" theory is baseless speculation. While there is a small remnant of the Haida in the code (as there is for Genoa in the base game), the Cree are NOT referred to as the Haida in the code as someone above suggested. They're decisively CIVILIZATION_CREE.

Also, the icon is 100% Cree as demonstrated by @Eagle Pursuit 2 years ago: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r-f-almost-included-the-haida.629447/#post-15055099

Do you really think a AAA game development team with highly skilled artists couldn't do a quick icon change if they had to quickly pivot from Haida to the Cree? And if that were the case, then how on earth could they have gotten the voice acting and modeling for Poundmaker done but not have enough time to do a simple icon? Makes no sense.

So there is nothing to indicate any sort of scramble or misstep with the Cree iconography.

Genoa would’ve been a cool civ to have

 

[pokiehl]

It is not "baseless speculation." The Haida are referenced in the code. The civ's colors and art style are clearly Haida. It is quite clear that the civilization that became the Cree was originally intended to be the Haida

We're not debating whether the Haida were ever considered for inclusion; that's moving the goalposts and I already acknowledged they were. You stated:

"The Cree very strongly look like they were intended to be the Haida and that they went pretty far into development as the Haida."

I disagree. As @Alexander's Hetaroi pointed out, the city-style doesn't seem distinctly 'un-Cree' or distinctly Haida to me at all.

So beyond that, how can you assert that they were so far enough into development that they couldn't change the RGB code for a color palette, redraw an icon, or change a few simple geometric city building models, but somehow had enough time to create Cree music, record a Cree speaker, and create a hand-animated Poundmaker?

 

[Zaarin]

We're not debating whether the Haida were ever considered for inclusion; that's moving the goalposts and I already acknowledged they were. You stated:

"The Cree very strongly look like they were intended to be the Haida and that they went pretty far into development as the Haida."

My apologies. I wasn't trying to make any assertion about the timeframe of their inclusion or removal.

I disagree. As @Alexander's Hetaroi pointed out, the city-style doesn't seem distinctly 'un-Cree' or distinctly Haida to me at all.

A matter of opinion. Having spent a great deal of time studying PNW architecture, it looks very PNW to me.

So beyond that, how can you assert that they were so far enough into development that they couldn't change the RGB code for a color palette

I don't know if they could have, but they very clearly didn't. Traditional PNW art always uses black, red, blue-green, and green; meanwhile I'm not familiar of any particular association of those colors with the Cree. The brown and orange of their alternate jersey looks much more Cree.

 

[AsH2]

..
Oof I forgot about those. V's design was really questionable. I don't think VI gets enough credit for its greater cultural sensitivity.

Also, wouldn't it be cool to have a Helsinki civ with a skiing UU?
..

So would an exile finn civ with Larry Hagman as leader.

 

[AntSou]

Then a Plains tribe is the only option because the Plains tribes were the only ones to wear the feathered war bonnets.

I didn't know that war bonnets were that specific, BUT I specifically chose the word "headgear" because Tecumseh was depicted as wearing some sort of turban with a single feather which is most definitely not a war bonnet . I've noticed this type of "feathered headgear" elsewhere but I don't know what they are called.

 

[Zaarin]

I didn't know that war bonnets were that specific, BUT I specifically chose the word "headgear" because Tecumseh was depicted as wearing some sort of turban with a single feather which is most definitely not a war bonnet . I've noticed this type of "feathered headgear" elsewhere but I don't know what they are called.

They're actually called turbans. They were pretty common in the Eastern Woodlands, particularly the Southeast. You'll see a lot of Creeks and Seminoles wearing them.

 

[TeddyMain]

Maybe, but if my choices are the Iroquois or the Sioux, I'll take the Iroquois in a heartbeat. (In general, I think people here overestimate how much Firaxis cares about TSL.) I certainly wouldn't take them as a given, but I think the Iroquois stand a chance as a very safe choice.

I actually agree, I'd much prefer the Iroquois over the Sioux. I just feel like their chances are overrated personally. Also please correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Firaxis say something about focusing on unrepresented areas/regions?

 

[AntSou]

how can you assert that they were so far enough into development that they couldn't change the RGB code for a color palette, redraw an icon, or change a few simple geometric city building models, but somehow had enough time to create Cree music, record a Cree speaker, and create a hand-animated Poundmaker?

I don't know if they could have, but they very clearly didn't. Traditional PNW art always uses black, red, blue-green, and green; meanwhile I'm not familiar of any particular association of those colors with the Cree. The brown and orange of their alternate jersey looks much more Cree.

Could maybe be something as simple as miscommunication? It's a large project, and maybe it was overlooked exactly because the color palette of the icon is a small detail when compared to things like music and language.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Could maybe be something as simple as miscommunication? It's a large project, and maybe it was overlooked exactly because the color palette of the icon is a small detail when compared to things like music and language.

this seems most likely to me: all we know is to some extent, the haida and genoa were planned for this game but didn’t make it in. Perhaps they wanted to keep them for later, perhaps they couldn’t get cool and fun abilities, perhaps in the case of haida, the nation itself didn’t want to be in the game.

Assertions of how long they planned on having the haida before they changed to the cree are pointless. All I’ll say is that the character design, voice acting and music are the most time consuming aspects of the game and those have stayed true to Poundmaker and the Cree.

It would be nice if devs went in depth into why they made the decision at some point though, like how they talked about why they didn’t do the Pueblo.

Perhaps with the Haida they thought it’d play too similar to Norway?

 

[Zaarin]

Perhaps with the Haida they thought it’d play too similar to Norway?

TBH I'd like to see them as a strong culture civ with hefty food bonuses to bonus resources so I wouldn't see them as looking anything like Norway personally. If anything, I'd see them encroaching on Maori and Indonesia.