[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Geminus Leonem]

Welp... I just realized that they are releasing the Civ Packs regionally and that they are going eastwards...

America (Maya/G.Colombia) -> Africa (Ethiopia) -> Europe (Gauls/Byz) -> Middle East (Babylon) -> Sinosphere (Vietnam/Kublai)

So the last Civ will probably be a Pacific Islander one... maybe Hawaii led by Queen Lili'uokalani or something the like.

 

[Zaarin]

Welp... I just realized that they are releasing the Civ Packs regionally and that they are going eastwards...

America (Maya/G.Colombia) -> Africa (Ethiopia) -> Europe (Gauls/Byz) -> Middle East (Babylon) -> Sinosphere (Vietnam/Kublai)

So the last Civ will probably be a Pacific Islander one... maybe Hawaii led by Queen Lili'uokalani or something the like.

I'd be astonished if we got anything more from the Pacific. Plus strictly speaking the Gauls are west of Ethiopia. (Your general theory could still hold, though: whether the final civ is Portugal or a second Native American civ, they'd be east of China. )

 

[notNamed]

I'd be astonished if we got anything more from the Pacific. Plus strictly speaking the Gauls are west of Ethiopia. (Your general theory could still hold, though: whether the final civ is Portugal or a second Native American civ, they'd be east of China. )

They could, idk, try to do modern Phillipines.

 

[Jeppetto]

I would kill to look as good at my current age of 30 as Ramesses II's official portraits alleged he looked at 90.

Time to bow to them egyptian gods: L'Oreal, the goddess of Nile and Eternal Beauty

 

[Zaarin]

They could, idk, try to do modern Phillipines.

The Philippines are SEA, not the Pacific/Oceania, but I'm pretty certain Vietnam is going to be it for SEA, too.

Time to bow to them egyptian gods: L'Oreal, the goddess of Nile and Eternal Beauty

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Ma'atbeline.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'd be astonished if we got anything more from the Pacific. Plus strictly speaking the Gauls are west of Ethiopia. (Your general theory could still hold, though: whether the final civ is Portugal or a second Native American civ, they'd be east of China. )

Byzantium is also west of Ethiopia, well at least Constantinople.

They could, idk, try to do modern Phillipines.

Well the Philippines were founded by a Portuguese explorer, in the name of Spain, and were colonized by Spain when they were in a union with Portugal.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The cycle of nomadic steppe riders using their mobility to take advantage and conquer a settled empire only to become the new settled empire is a tale as old as time--see the Kassites and Sumerians, Amorites and Babylonians, Hyksos and Egyptians, Parthians and Seleucids, Mongols and the Song, the Magyars and the Bulgarians, etc.

A recent history of the Xhong-Nu pointed out that the population difference between the pastoral groups and the city-building agriculturalists was enormous. Therefore, while the pastoral peoples had an advantage in that every adult male was a horseman and skilled with weapons because he had to protect his herds from predators human and other, their total numbers were almost an order of magnitude less than the 'settled' civs. That meant, while they might match the army size of the city folk by mobilizing the bulk of their manpower (briefly), if they conquered a settled group they were fairly quickly absorbed by the larger population genetically and overwhelmed by the more affluent culture of the cities - the pattern you describe kept repeating everywhere the two groups met.

 

[8housesofelixir]

they were fairly quickly absorbed by the larger population genetically and overwhelmed by the more affluent culture of the cities

I don't think "at least 200-300 years" equal to "fairly quickly". At least in East Asia, "speedy" cultural assimilation of steppe nomads is basically a myth.

 

[AaronTBD]

They should add an Antarctican Civ led by Robert F. Scott or Roald Amundsen to solve the Oceania dispute (Fr though we should add Hawaii or Nan Madol into civ)

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

The Philippines are SEA, not the Pacific/Oceania

Depends!

"Southeast Asia" as a term was invented and used by Allied military forces during World War II. It denoted a military theater of war and only later came to mean a kind of cultural region.
"Indochina" and "Indonesia" were ways to say "oh, that area between India and China" - the former got associated later with the French colonies and the latter with the nation-state that came up out of the Dutch colonies.
"Suvarnaphumi" was a term used in the Ramayana, among others, to point vaguely eastward, to a "golden peninsula".
"Nanyang" was a similar hand-waving "over there" towards SE Asia from Chinese sources.

Where do the Philippines belong here? They're Southeast Asian in the military sense, but we have to recognize that that definition is pretty meaningless outside of a 1940s-era or Cold War-era war room. They are certainly not Indochina or Suvarnaphumi, though some islands were "indianized" and later Muslim city-states like much of Indonesia, but not all of the islands (mostly the south). Some areas were pretty free of those Sanskrit / Muslim influences altogether and looked more like Taiwan or Ryukyu. (zero points)
Colonially, they shared more with Latin America (re: Spanish dominion, Catholicism, American domination) than Asia. (one point for "elsewhere than Asia")
Ecologically, they're west of the "Wallace line," an ecological division between Asian flora and fauna (on the west) and Oceania (on the east). (one point for Asia)
They're in ASEAN (one point for Asia), but, again, that's a very recent division.

The point here is that you can make a good case for the meaninglessness of such regions - the Philippines is one of those more complicated cases re: where it belongs. Others, too - Vietnam, with its Mahayana influences, is it Southeast Asian or East Asian? Sri Lanka (Theravada Buddhist, a long history of monastic exchange with Burma and Siam...) could be a potential Southeast Asia candidate. East Timor, West Papua, and other regions on the fringes of the area... what's the point of putting them in (or leaving them out)? What does thinking regionally get us (or blind us to)?

 

[Zaarin]

@Andrew Johnson [FXS] My general point, though, was that the Philippines is not Polynesia/Micronesia/Australasia, which point I think you made more thoroughly than I could have.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't think "at least 200-300 years" equal to "fairly quickly". At least in East Asia, "speedy" cultural assimilation of steppe nomads is basically a myth.

Which steppe nomads? Those that stayed home on the steppes did not assimilate at all until the 'civilized' troops came to them in the 15th - 17th centuries CE. Those that actually moved into the 'civilized' states and took them over disappeared as separate groups very quickly. The example that springs to mind are the Mongols, who completed the conquest of the southern Song in 1264 CE or so, proclaimed the Great Yuan Dynasty in 1271, and by 1313 Buyantu Khan had re-established the traditional Chinese imperial examinations for civil servants. That's 49 years from Mongol Conquest to Chinese administration re-established, which is pretty fast assimilation of the conquering by the conquered's techniques and practices. That's 'fairly quickly' to me.

Now, the other part of that whole equation is that 'assimilation' worked both ways. In the Chinese - Mongol or "northern barbarian' example, the various Chinese states had been buying cavalry horses and adopting cavalry techniques and technology (saddles, possibly stirrups) from the 'barbarians' for centuries and many Chinese Dynasties had a considerable percentage of 'recent barbarians' in their make-up. But it was, of course, quite impossible to convert China into a pastoral steppe culture, so in the long run the bulk of the cultural assimilation went one way.

 

[Patine]

Which steppe nomads? Those that stayed home on the steppes did not assimilate at all until the 'civilized' troops came to them in the 15th - 17th centuries CE. Those that actually moved into the 'civilized' states and took them over disappeared as separate groups very quickly. The example that springs to mind are the Mongols, who completed the conquest of the southern Song in 1264 CE or so, proclaimed the Great Yuan Dynasty in 1271, and by 1313 Buyantu Khan had re-established the traditional Chinese imperial examinations for civil servants. That's 49 years from Mongol Conquest to Chinese administration re-established, which is pretty fast assimilation of the conquering by the conquered's techniques and practices. That's 'fairly quickly' to me.

Now, the other part of that whole equation is that 'assimilation' worked both ways. In the Chinese - Mongol or "northern barbarian' example, the various Chinese states had been buying cavalry horses and adopting cavalry techniques and technology (saddles, possibly stirrups) from the 'barbarians' for centuries and many Chinese Dynasties had a considerable percentage of 'recent barbarians' in their make-up. But it was, of course, quite impossible to convert China into a pastoral steppe culture, so in the long run the bulk of the cultural assimilation went one way.

The Mongol chieftains also preferred to marry Chinese noble-ladies over their own women after the fall of the Song, so the later Yuan (and Northern Yuan) Dynasties had significant Han blood - and Han mothers-in-law nannying their children.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Those that actually moved into the 'civilized' states and took them over disappeared as separate groups very quickly.

The Xianbei people, who established the Northern Wei dynasty, took more than 100 years (408-534) to "Sinicize" themselves after moved into the Han populations of Northern China, and collapsed because of a considerable amount of them refused to be sinicized and rebelled. Looks not "quickly" at all.

One of the dynasties that succeed Northern Wei, the Eastern Wei-Northern Qi dynasty (534-577 - that's 40 more years after the more than 100 years already), was created by a Xianbei-ized Han general. So even agrarian Chinese can adopt a steppe culture and identity.

The example that springs to mind are the Mongols, who completed the conquest of the southern Song in 1264 CE or so, proclaimed the Great Yuan Dynasty in 1271, and by 1313 Buyantu Khan had re-established the traditional Chinese imperial examinations for civil servants. That's 49 years from Mongol Conquest to Chinese administration re-established, which is pretty fast assimilation of the conquering by the conquered's techniques and practices. That's 'fairly quickly' to me.

If accepting a bureaucrat-selecting system equals to culture assimilation, then we can also safely conclude that China also assimilated Korea and Vietnam, while Byzantine assimilated the Ottomans. Sounds about right.

The Mongols had their own steppe-style governance system, Darughachi, and the re-introduction of Imperial Examinations didn't stop the Darughachi system from running. In fact, the Confucian scholar-officials and the steppe Darughachi basically worked as two parallel system in Yuan dynasty. Buyantu Khan, who restored the Imperial Examinations, also finalized the Yuan legal code, a lot of which was drawn from Mongol traditions; and he employed them to rule his Chinese subjects.

Most importantly, the adaption of Imperial Examinations also didn't stop Mongol Emperors and aristocrats continued to speak Mongolian and participate in Mongolian culture practices - in other words, didn't mark an end of their Mongolian identity. When Chinese forces drove the Mongols away in 1368, the Mongols easily returned to the steppes as well as returned to nomadic empire. Didn't sound like being assimilated at all.

Now, the other part of that whole equation is that 'assimilation' worked both ways. …But it was, of course, quite impossible to convert China into a pastoral steppe culture, so in the long run the bulk of the cultural assimilation went one way.

Throughout the Ming dynasty - the Chinese dynasty which drove away the Mongols - the Ming subjects who lived in the border regions of the empire, continued to defect to Mongols because of high taxes or harsh corvée duties.

During the reign of Jiajing Emperor (1521-1567), the Ming bureaucrats tend to persecute the White Lotus cultists, and as a result the locals of the Shanxi Province (right next to the territories of Tümed Mongols), who were largely cultists, defected to steppes in tens of thousands. The Khan of the Tümed Mongols, Altan Khan, even crossed the Great Wall and besieged Beijing in 1550 with the help of those defected cultists. The Chinese population defected to the Tümed Mongols were so large in number, to the point which they formed a city around the Ordu of the Tümed Mongols, named Guihua (today's Hoh'hot). Nearly all these Chinese people were assimilated into Mongols after one or two generations.

There are also a great many records about how early Manchu rulers assimilated Han Chinese into the Eight Banners, and many of these people developed a Manchu identity afterwards. It just works both ways.

The Mongol chieftains also preferred to marry Chinese noble-ladies over their own women after the fall of the Song, so the later Yuan (and Northern Yuan) Dynasties had significant Han blood - and Han mothers-in-law nannying their children.

Again, if the conquers marrying the conquereds equals to culture assimilation, then we can also safely conclude that Sabines assimilated the Romans, and Greeks assimilated the Ottomans. Sounds about right.

Also, please check some lists about Mongolian emperors' wives before claiming like that. Most of them were actually Mongolians, or at least Koreans (Empress Gi was Korean). Only very few of them were Han Chinese, if there was any.

If we really want to talk about "bloodlines" - it is highly possible that the Ming imperial household had a Mongol blood as well.
Yongle Emperor secretly worshipped one of the consorts of his father in the Royal Ancestral Hall as his real biological mother, instead of his father's wife. According to contemporary historical accounts, this mysterious consort, called Gong Fei 碽妃, was either Mongolian or Korean. A Mongolian chronicle, Altan Tobchi, also claimed that Yongle's mother was a Mongolian women.



In short, let me reaffirm my argument: At least in East Asia, "speedy" cultural assimilation of steppe nomads is basically a myth.

 

[Birch617]

If the Champa get into the game, what would their UU be?

 

[8housesofelixir]

If the Champa get into the game, what would their UU be?

I know it may sounds old, but probably an Elephant UU (that is, if it is not a naval UU).

Vietnam's use of elephant in warfare was very likely adopted from Champa's use of elephant. The last strong king of Champa, Po Binasuor (Chế Bồng Nga in Vietnamese), developed a series of dedicated elephant tactics and employ them to defeat Vietnam forces.

 

[almughavar]

If the Champa get into the game, what would their UU be?

It's gonna be a warship, since Champa's economy relied on trading, they needed to maintain a strong fleet, and in reality Champa couldn't compete with other countries in the region in terms of land power.

 

[LoneRebel]

Well the Philippines were founded by a Portuguese explorer, in the name of Spain, and were colonized by Spain when they were in a union with Portugal.

Bom dia!

Slight correction. Magellan did not come up with the name "Felipinas", he just involved himself in local disputes and got himself killed. It was another Spanish explorer that came up with the name.

 

[notNamed]

It's gonna be a warship, since Champa's economy relied on trading, they needed to maintain a strong fleet.

The Khmer reliefs of their war with the Champa don't exactly show off impressive navies, though.
Ironically enough, the ballista on elephants came from them and Khmer simply adopted it. Had we wanted to incude Champa, that unit (already deemed good enough for inclusion for Khmer) would have gone to them.
Also, I disagree with the uncompetitve nature of the Champa. If you read that travel chronicle on Khmer Empire, it literally talks about how the Champa require a pretty brutal (human) gall-bladder tribute from the Khmer and those reluctantly give it to them. The reliefs we so commonly see cited for Khmer actually show off scenes of the Khmer leader finally beating them back after Champas came in and conquered the place for 5 years or so.

 

[almughavar]

The Khmer reliefs of their war with the Champa don't exactly show off impressive navies, though.
Ironically enough, the ballista on elephants came from them and Khmer simply adopted it. Had we wanted to incude Champa, that unit (already deemed good enough for inclusion for Khmer) would have gone to them.
Also, I disagree with the uncompetitve nature of the Champa. If you read that travel chronicle on Khmer Empire, it literally talks about how the Champa require a pretty brutal (human) gall-bladder tribute from the Khmer and those reluctantly give it to them. The reliefs we so commonly see cited for Khmer actually show off scenes of the Khmer leader finally beating them back after Champas came in and conquered the place for 5 years or so.

I didn’t say that Champa was uncompetitive. I said that it was Champa’s navy which gave it an edge over other countries in the region, but at the same time its land power was weaker compared to them.

I can only guess that the war you mentioned was the 1170s Champa - Khmer war, in which the Champa was unable to gain an upper hand to break the stalemate, until they used their warships to sail upstream the Mekong River to the Tonle Sap lake in Khmer Empire and laid waste to its capital (Angkor), killing the Khmer king in process.

So yeah, if anything your example proved my point of Champa military’s main advantage was its navy.