[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Zaarin]

If I may ask, what do you think is the likelihood that the Huns that plagued the latter days of the Roman Empire were actually, as some theorize, a westward migrating column of the Xianbei or the Xiongnu (or even, perhaps, Rouran Khaganate), and whether or not the groups of "Huns," of the 5th-8th Century Northern Indian Subcontinent/Southern Central Asian plains were actually ethnically and linguistically related to Attila's Huns, or were actually just assigned such an association by Byzantine writers?

I'm not 8housesofelixir, but it's my understanding that the association with the Hephthalites is generally given more credence by modern scholars than the Xiongnu (though both remain strongly theoretical and based chiefly on chance similarities of names--similarities in the Xiongnu's case that look considerably less similar in Old Chinese).

 

[Codeword Iroquois]

I am 99.99999999999% sure that they won't do another American or European Civ. They always just do 2 American and 2 European Civs per Expansion and so far they are following their usual quasi-rules to the letter:

• 4 Returned Civs
• 4 New Civs
• 3 Female Leaders, one of which must replace a Returned Civ's male leader from Civ V.
• 1 S.American Civ and 1 N.American Civ with one of them being New and the other Returned
• 1 Civ from Africa
• 2 European Civs with one of them being New and the other Returned
• 3 Civs from Asia+Oceania with 1 one of them being from the Middle East
• 1 Civ must have used to be under the British Empire's sphere

So, to summarize for NFP:
Rule 1 is followed by the Maya, Ethiopia, Byzantium, and Babylon.
Rule 2 is followed by Gran Colombia, Gaul, Vietnam, and whatever civilization we get in March.
Rule 3 is followed by the Maya, presumably by Vietnam, and by the civilization we get in March.
Rule 4 is followed by Gran Colombia and the Maya.
Rule 5 is followed by Ethiopia.
Rule 6 is followed by Gaul and Byzantium.
Rule 7 is followed by Babylon, Vietnam, and the civ we get in March.
Rule 8 is presumably followed by the civ we get in march (though Babylon was centered in Iraq, which was for a time under the British Empire).
SO... We are looking for a civilization we have not had, from the Asia and Oceanian area, and which may have been for a time under the sphere of influence of the British Empire, led by a woman.
Potential ideas: Hawaii under Lili'uokani. Unlikely because of the British Empire bit.
Haudenosaunee under Jigonhsasee. Unlikely because of Asia and Oceania. (And technically the "new" part, but they rebranded Carthage as Phoenicia, so...)
Saudeleur or Nan Madol? Also unlikely because of the British Empire bit. I'm inclined to believe that Babylon is the civ meant to represent the Anglosphere just because it opens up so many more possibilities.

 

[SMcM]

With virtually all staples covered by NFP, I don't think there will be any more DLC. If Portugal doesn't make it now, I don't think it'll make it at all.

Yeah I suppose that is probable. Still I hope they don't add Maria.

 

[AaronTBD]

I wonder if Portugal is added and Portugal Has to have a female ruler, is there a better one than Maria the Mad?

 

[Geminus Leonem]

What does any of that have to do with where Canada is located? Anthropological North America is the region from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Ocean. The behavior of the people who lived there is utterly and bafflingly irrelevant to a discussion of where it's located.

Mesoamerica is its own anthropological region and is not considered with North America in anthropology, which, again, begins at the Rio Grande. The Maya are Mesoamerican, not North American.

Congratulations, I did, too, since I predicted from day one that this was going to be a fan service pack. The people speculating on all manner of obscure and unexpected civs, however worthy, were bound to be disappointed. I expected Assyria over Babylon and Gaul was a surprise, but overall NFP has been exactly what I predicted it would be. And to that end a second Oceania civ has a 0% chance of making it into NFP. Very few people are asking for it; it doesn't suit the purpose of the pass.

Well, then I think you're in for a pleasant surprise. I think you're regarding their "rules" as much more sacrosanct than they do. NFP exists as fan service, pure and simple. We've had a few surprises, but they're not going to pick Hawai'i when Portugal or a Native North American civ will sell better and will round out the roster better before they move on to whatever is in development next.

First off, "Anthropological North America" as a name for the US and Canada region is not a thing. It's not a term used in that capacity and it's the reason that I got confused to high heavens. Same thing for the erroneous "Anthropological Mesoamerica is not North America" bit. Doesn't really matter to the issue at hand, it's just something that ticked me off is all.

I heavily disagree both with the account of the NFP being just fanservice (too experimental & low cost/effort for that) and with the account that their internal rules are not being followed. They are following the rules to the letter, and expecting them to just stop at the very last entry after more than 3 years of not deviating is a tad too wishful thinking.

And even if I am wrong and they don't add in a Pacific Islander as the last Civ, they will still add in an Asian Civ (maybe the Philippines or Siam/Thailand) not a 3rd European or American Civ. That I can 100% guarantee.

 

[Patine]

First off, "Anthropological North America" as a name for the US and Canada region is not a thing. It's not a term used in that capacity and it's the reason that I got confused to high heavens. Same thing for the erroneous "Anthropological Mesoamerica is not North America" bit. Doesn't really matter to the issue at hand, it's just something that ticked me off is all.

"Anglo-America," was used as a geopolitical term for Canada and the United States (as opposed to Latin America) in my younger days, until Quebecois and Anglo-Caribbeans became annoyed by their respective placements, and then the Western Hemisphere was subdivided into two geographical continents (North and South America), or confirmed as such a division, and five geopolitical zones, but my understanding is Anthropological zones are more complex, and often more contested, in some cases.

 

[Zaarin]

I wonder if Portugal is added and Portugal Has to have a female ruler, is there a better one than Maria the Mad?

Maria II? Though Portugal was pretty irrelevant by her time.

First off, "Anthropological North America" as a name for the US and Canada region is not a thing. It's not a term used in that capacity and it's the reason that I got confused to high heavens. Same thing for the erroneous "Anthropological Mesoamerica is not North America" bit. Doesn't really matter to the issue at hand, it's just something that ticked me off is all.

It is a thing. When discussing Native Americans, North America stops at the Rio Grande, and Mesoamerica is regarded separately. If you're not familiar with that, you're probably not very well read on Native American anthropology.

They are following the rules to the letter, and expecting them to just stop at the very last entry after more than 3 years of not deviating is a tad too wishful thinking.

Considering the existence of these rules is your own invention, no wishful thinking is involved in believing that your arbitrary rules do not influence Firaxis' choices.

And even if I am wrong and they don't add in a Pacific Islander as the last Civ, they will still add in an Asian Civ (maybe the Philippines or Siam/Thailand) not a 3rd European or American Civ. That I can 100% guarantee.

And I'm 100% certain you're wrong. Vietnam and Kublai Khan will be our last civs from Asia, and we won't be getting anything more from the Pacific, either.

TBH this conversation is non-productive. You can cling to your invented rules, but IMO the evidence is strongly against you. I rest my case.

 

[Geminus Leonem]

"Anglo-America," was used as a geopolitical term for Canada and the United States (as opposed to Latin America) in my younger days, until Quebecois and Anglo-Caribbeans became annoyed by their respective placements, and then the Western Hemisphere was subdivided into two geographical continents (North and South America), or confirmed as such a division, and five geopolitical zones, but my understanding is Anthropological zones are more complex, and often more contested, in some cases.

Anglo-America is the term that is more used where I live to mention US & Canada. Whenever North America is mentioned in any factor (be it geographical, anthropological, or what have you) it's always in reference to the whole of North America, never to just the arbitrarily chosen part north of Rio Grande.

 

[Patine]

Maria II? Though Portugal was pretty irrelevant by her time.


It is a thing. When discussing Native Americans, North America stops at the Rio Grande, and Mesoamerica is regarded separately. If you're not familiar with that, you're probably not very well read on Native American anthropology.

What about the "Aridamerica," cultural region (Navajo, Apache, Pueblo, Hopi, "Chichimecs," etc.)? That seems to dip below the Rio Grande for a ways and straddle the modern border.

 

[Zaarin]

What about the "Aridamerica," cultural region (Navajo, Apache, Pueblo, Hopi, "Chichimecs," etc.)? That seems to dip below the Rio Grande for a ways and straddle the modern border.

Yes, there's a great deal of similarity between the Southwest US and Northwestern Mexico. If you grab a broad overview, though--like the Cambridge Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun--it will virtually always restrict itself to the United States and Canada; more specialized works will cross borders as needed. Mesoamerica is always regarded on its own because it's a very well-established and self-contained cultural and linguistic zone.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Anthropological zones are more complex, and often more contested, in some cases.

Just sayin' - Ph.D carryin' anthropologist over here. I think the notion of culture areas is a Kroeber (1939) reference. It's not really a thing that we use much anymore, at least in cultural anthropology, though perhaps my archaeology colleagues might?

 

[Geminus Leonem]

It is a thing. When discussing Native Americans, North America stops at the Rio Grande, and Mesoamerica is regarded separately. If you're not familiar with that, you're probably not very well read on Native American anthropology.

Considering the existence of these rules is your own invention, no wishful thinking is involved in believing that your arbitrary rules do not influence Firaxis' choices.

And I'm 100% certain you're wrong. Vietnam and Kublai Khan will be our last civs from Asia, and we won't be getting anything more from the Pacific, either.

TBH this conversation is non-productive. You can cling to your invented rules, but IMO the evidence is strongly against you. I rest my case.

You are the one clinging to your random wish that Portugal or a Native American will be picked. For no reason aside from "Just because". Astounding.
It's actually a really good way to flippantly ignore the whole conversation in this thread, lol.

Though it is true that this is going nowhere. You clearly are not interested in even pondering on different opinions and actively ignore speculation based on repeated past results and prefer to just close your eyes, cover your ears, and wish really hard that they will add your favorite picks! Surely that will make it a reality!

Because Firaxis is totally not a company that follows structural rules. No, in this case, the devs are totally random in picking, designing, and studying Civilizations. They are not at all using rules to ensure a good spread of Civs both geographically and thematically while making sure that no region is being underrepresented. Of course not! And the repeated patterns that other people notice, well those can just be attributed to baseless conjecture no matter how many times it happens! Totally random! Even if it happening right now! Such willing ignorance is truly inspiring.

Also, I am indeed well-read on Native American Anthropology and that includes the Mesoamerican tribes. I have no idea what papers you have read that randomly excludes them, but I assume (that, if you have even read one at all) it's an old US and/or Canada work since those usually distance themselves from Latin America in whatever way they can.

PS: As you can see I was now appropriately flippant in this comment since you are rather obstinate, hard-headed, and rude as heck. Hope I am emulating your style of answer correctly! All in good fun of course.

PSS: I just now noticed that you claimed to have also guessed the NFP civs without any backing to it... weird I didn't notice the obvious handwaving... Anyway, cheers, and have a good one!

 

[Zaarin]

You are the one clinging to your random wish that Portugal or a Native American will be picked. For no reason aside from "Just because". Astounding.

I never said any such thing, but thank you for putting words in my mouth. I'm neither going to read further into your post nor respond to it because you are arrogant and self-satisfied, and I have better things to do with my time than argue with smug self-satisfied people on the internet. I used to enjoy it as a teenager, but when I grew up I found arguing for its own sake lost its charm. Have a nice day.

 

[GenyaArikado]

You are the one clinging to your random wish that Portugal or a Native American will be picked. For no reason aside from "Just because". Astounding.

Erm... We actually had a leaker ages ago who mentioned those civs. They aren't coming from nowhere

Anyway. Rooting for North America Native civ with a female leader for last female leader

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

So, to summarize for NFP:
Rule 1 is followed by the Maya, Ethiopia, Byzantium, and Babylon.
Rule 2 is followed by Gran Colombia, Gaul, Vietnam, and whatever civilization we get in March.
Rule 3 is followed by the Maya, presumably by Vietnam, and by the civilization we get in March.
Rule 4 is followed by Gran Colombia and the Maya.
Rule 5 is followed by Ethiopia.
Rule 6 is followed by Gaul and Byzantium.
Rule 7 is followed by Babylon, Vietnam, and the civ we get in March.
Rule 8 is presumably followed by the civ we get in march (though Babylon was centered in Iraq, which was for a time under the British Empire).
SO... We are looking for a civilization we have not had, from the Asia and Oceanian area, and which may have been for a time under the sphere of influence of the British Empire, led by a woman.
Potential ideas: Hawaii under Lili'uokani. Unlikely because of the British Empire bit.
Haudenosaunee under Jigonhsasee. Unlikely because of Asia and Oceania. (And technically the "new" part, but they rebranded Carthage as Phoenicia, so...)
Saudeleur or Nan Madol? Also unlikely because of the British Empire bit. I'm inclined to believe that Babylon is the civ meant to represent the Anglosphere just because it opens up so many more possibilities.

Queen Lili'uokani is already a Great Musician with Great work of music in the game so I don't see her happening as the only reasonable female leader of Hawaii.

If we have to pick a female leader for Oceania let it be Queen Salamasina of Samoa.

I personally think this is it and they are going to wrap up the game by introducing Portugal, but if not there is the off chance they could do Jigonhsasee of the Haudenosaunee as well.

The only other region that I can possibly see is North Africa, like Dihya of the Berbers, considering we don't have any representation from there. Even so I think the chance of them appearing are even slim but higher than Oceania at least.

I wonder if Portugal is added and Portugal Has to have a female ruler, is there a better one than Maria the Mad?

Que the appearance of Isabella of Portugal on the initial leader's portrait again.

You are the one clinging to your random wish that Portugal or a Native American will be picked. For no reason aside from "Just because". Astounding.
It's actually a really good way to flippantly ignore the whole conversation in this thread, lol.

I am also 99.99999% sure that will end up being the case as well.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Qing government maintained a very strict control over the migration of Chinese population into Manchuria and Mongolia (then called Guanwai 關外, "the Land beyond the Passes of the Great Wall") before late 19th century. Technically speaking, the Manchu culture heavily "influenced" the "Chinese" culture (for instance, clothing, language customs, foods), but not to the point of a large scale assimilation.

However, there is one important point about the Manchus - you probably noticed I didn't talk much about Manchus in my last post about assimilation, and this is the reason: They are not steppe people. They didn't live in the steppes; they were settled farmers with advanced agriculture, and they barely practice pastoral nomadism. Han Chinese and Koreans who lived in Manchuria before 17th century easily assimilated into the Manchus, because their lifestyle and economical practices were not that different. And, conversely (as you can tell), when Han Chinese migrated into Manchuria in massive numbers in late 19th century, the Manchus assimilated into them as well (but not "easily", it took nearly 100 years and some forced education), for both are agriculturists.

I was actually aware that the Manchus were not. strictly speaking, 'pastoral', but from an entirely different source: after WWII the US command in Japan had interned Japanese Army officers who had served in Manchuria write up a massive collection of reports on the ethnology, culture, climate and terrain of the entire region. I found the collection in a US Army library and read most of it - which included a detailed account of the Manchus and their descendants' lifestyle, culture, and economy. You just never know what you can find if you look . . .

The Mongols, on the other hand, remained on steppes with their own culture and lifestyle. A massive amount of Han Chinese migrated into Mongol territories - on the border of the steppes - since 19th century and turned these regions into farmlands, but the Mongols (even those who now lived in PRC) still retained their culture, social practice, and not to say, language. One of the reason is the Mongols still practice pastoralism (or at least livestock raising) on the steppes while the Han Chinese are just move into the region for farming and commerce.

That's why I said, after Humankind's portrayals of the Huns, what 4x games still lacks about steppe people is how they turned a land of a logistic nightmare into an empire based on "highways" - in other words, how they actually survived in the steppes, while the agriculturists cannot.
The agriculturists cannot simply "transplant" their way of life to the steppes (at least before modern technology such as dams and large-scale irrigation works); if they want to survive, they need to adopt the "steppe way" - and often being assimilated as a result. Conversely, the steppe people (real steppe people, not Manchu farmers), when move into agricultural lands, need to either 1. adopt the agricultural way (being assimilated as a result) 2. turn the agricultural lands into pastures (which is actually quite feasible, Yuan had done this) and continued their pastoralism, but at the cost of reduce agricultural population and their economical outputs in huge amount.

If any 4x games in the future can represent this dynamic - that is, represent the steppes as unsurvivable for agrarian society (similar to how Desert and Tundra works currently), requires every empire that moved into it to adopt the "steppe way" in order to survive, and made the steppe feature an important part of these empire's culture traits - then I would safely call it a (nearly) perfect 4x game. That's how the Huns, the Mongols, the Göktürks, etc. made their history.

We are in complete agreement here, and while the difference between the steppe and the other climate/terrain was extreme, the precarious nature of ancient/classical/medieval economies and food production is also grossly underestimated and mis-represented in the 4X historical game genre, and it extended until quite late in the Industrial Era: the northern plains of North America were considered entirely unsuitable for agriculture until very late in the 19th century. In fact, until German emigrants from Russia (the 'Volga Germans' settled there at Catherine II's urging a century earlier) arrived in the Dakotas bringing seed stocks of a wheat hybrid they had developed that could ripen even in the short growing seasons of central Russia - or the American plains north of Kansas. Today it's a massive production center for grain, but that development is basically only about 150 years old.
To be a (nearly) perfect 4x game, the constant changes to economy, food production, and available terrain/climate for various activities has to keep changing throughout the game.
With the pressure from Humankind, we can hope that the designers of Civ VII will be taking a much harder look at all the 'standards' of the Civ franchise instead of handing us another reiteration of the Same Old Thing.

DNA reconstructions have shown the indo-europeans (pastoral) greatly outnumbered the Early European Farmer (EEF).

Spoiler disturbing example :

Here (in Sweden) there were 10 Battle Axe culture males per 1 EEF woman - that means it's likely my ancestry has sheep shagging uncles from that time.

This mis-match in population density was due to a wave of Plague preceding the Indo-European migration. See the latest edition of Scientific American (November 2020) for an article on Ancient Plagues describing the DNA of the plague which finally identified it as the 'depopulator' of the agrarian populations of Europe between about 3000 BCE and 2000 BCE. It turns out that the Black Death of the 14th century CE was the third or fourth Great Plague in Human history, and on the basis of the percentage of the afflicted population wiped out may not have even been the most lethal.

 

[Codeword Iroquois]

Queen Lili'uokani is already a Great Musician with Great work of music in the game so I don't see her happening as the only reasonable female leader of Hawaii.

If we have to pick a female leader for Oceania let it be Queen Salamasina of Samoa.

I personally think this is it and they are going to wrap up the game by introducing Portugal, but if not there is the off chance they could do Jigonhsasee of the Haudenosaunee as well.

The only other region that I can possibly see is North Africa, like Dihya of the Berbers, considering we don't have any representation from there. Even so I think the chance of them appearing are even slim but higher than Oceania at least.

I really am not all that familiar with Oceania, I'm afraid. Salamasina does sound like a worthy leader, from what I've read.

Oceania is a hard region to work with for speculation. So many different island groups with overlapping traditions, including them all as one feels blobby, but one individual group makes it feel like you're leaving out others. It's little wonder that it has only been touched on recently as far as design goes.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I really am not all that familiar with Oceania, I'm afraid. Salamasina does sound like a worthy leader, from what I've read.

Oceania is a hard region to work with for speculation. So many different island groups with overlapping traditions, including them all as one feels blobby, but one individual group makes it feel like you're leaving out others. It's little wonder that it has only been touched on recently as far as design goes.

I agree. The way they designed the Maori, and them talking about why they chose them out of all the other cultures, to me means they basically thought that Oceania/Polynesia was covered in the game.

As it stands I think really the only options for the last pack are to go with either Portugal (in every game since Civ 3), Native North America (had 2 in Civ 5 and currently just the Cree), or North Africa (not represented yet, was in civ 5 with Morocco) in that order.

 

[8housesofelixir]

@8housesofelixir If I may ask, what do you think is the likelihood that the Huns that plagued the latter days of the Roman Empire were actually, as some theorize, a westward migrating column of the Xianbei or the Xiongnu (or even, perhaps, Rouran Khaganate), and whether or not the groups of "Huns," of the 5th-8th Century Northern Indian Subcontinent/Southern Central Asian plains were actually ethnically and linguistically related to Attila's Huns, or were actually just assigned such an association by Byzantine writers?

In addition to @Zaarin 's commitments - this is an interesting and hard question. To simply put: We don't have any nail-in-the-coffin evidence to say they are the same people, and we also don't have many nail-in-the-coffin evidence to say they are entirely unrelated.

Spoiler :

A lot of nomadic groups in the Central Asia have a name with a "Hun", "Hon", or "Xun" element: Xiongnu, Hu, Huns, Xionites, Hephthalites, Huna, Xwn; Chinese sources also recorded names such as Xunyu, Xianyun, Xianyu, and Xianbei, all begin with a /ɕ/ - although in Old Chinese all these Xs were very likely pronounced as a S; and speaking of S, we also have Saka, Sai, Scythians, and Sarmatians, whose names share a "Sa" or "Si" element. All these groups seemed to have a similar name, shared a similar culture (or two), speak similar languages, but whether they had more common features beyond those elements or not, we don't really know (@Zaarin might have a lot of things to add with this part).

On the other hand, there is a detail in the Chinese records, which I think I had mention about it in this thread before - according to Chinese sources, many sub-groups and smaller tribes of the nomadic peoples would take the name of a tribe that is the strongest of them as their common name. Houhanshu 後漢書 and Weishu 魏書 explicitly said that, when Xiongnu was defeated by the Eastern Han and moved away, while Xianbei tribes began to move into the steppes, "there were still a great many of Xiongnu tribes remained [on the steppe], they all began to call themselves 'Xianbei', there fore Xianbei become stronger." Moreover, a lot of Xiongnu surnames with aristocratic origins became Xianbei surnames in the Chinese records during this era.
Basically, although these smaller tribes were ethnically and linguistically different to each other to some extent, but they shared the same "name" and had a common leader, then they became the same "group" in the eyes of the foreign accounts.

Therefore my personal guess is, there was an important tribe/group in the steppes whose name begins with a "Hun" or "Hon", probably a group before the Xiongnu (the earliest name with a /ɕ/ in Chinese records was "Xianyun", about 600-800 years earlier than "Xiongnu"). This tribe was so influential, that a great many nomadic groups loosely related with this tribe began to take this "Hun" name to refer to themselves, and these myriad of groups gradually evolved into Xiongnu, Huns, Xionites, Hunas, etc.

I think this is a perfect example of how complicate the "ancient ethnics" can be, and that's why I tend to argue that an ethnical mechanism will be very hard to be implemented in the game. I would suggest having some "adaptive" trait to Eurasia nomadic civs in the future, if we really want to represent that.

 

[Zaarin]

(@Zaarin might have a lot of things to add with this part).

Not a lot honestly beyond that, re:Saka, I've seen Iranian proposed as the identity of the Xiongnu, but it doesn't seem to be one of the more popular theories. The Yuezhi were certainly Iranian, as were the Wusun. It's worth cautioning, though, that similar sounding names doesn't prove anything in itself; linguistic coincidence is much more common than many people realize. Unless these various groups were Iranian (which in many cases seems dubious), I doubt the names in "Sa" and "Si" are significant as there are solid Iranian etymologies for Saka, Scythian, and Sarmatian.