[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

With regard to Babylon, I actually have come to really like thematics on the handling of science (if not being particularly Babylonian). Though it will never happen, I would love if much of the game research was basically handled the way Babylon does, by acting in such a way as to promote innovation. Then, in a later era, more formal scientific methods develop allowing controlled and directed research advancement at a faster rate, if the civs invest in it appropriately.

This only came to mind after reading what someone else pointed out in a Babylon comment- that for much of human history research wasn't formally structured and targeted effectively.

 

Funny how the Greeks aren't the ones to be the eureka specialists, but Babylon is fun anyway!

 

To be fair, the Greeks stole all their eurekas from Babylon and the Egyptians anyway.

 

The "cultural Greeks" might be the best idea - although Greeks stole a lot of Eurekas from Babylon and Egypt, they did invent sophisticated political philosophy by themselves.

 

Not all. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the Greeks built on any Eurekas they got from Babylon and the Egyptians. Cases in Point:

The Greeks built large stone temples and monumental buildings like the two earlier Civs, but the Greeks were the first ones to reinforce stone structures with metal (in the Propylaea on the Acropolis in Athens, 440 - 430 BCE)

In those same monumental stone structures, the Greeks were the first to use cranes with mechanical advantage pulleys to lift and move stones (515 BCE, Corinth) - probably because the Greek city states didn't have access to the massive amounts of manpower available to the Egyptian and Babylonian builders.

And there was nothing anywhere else in the world like the Greek Hoplon shield, built of a combination of steamed formed wood, bronze/brass and leather, that defined the Hoplite from 600 BCE on.

And when the Greek and Mesopotamian/Egyptian science really got fused - in Hellenistic Alexandria around the Mouseion or Library there - it produced an explosion of scientific advances in numerous fields, like:
Euclid's Elements was published under Ptolemy I in Egypt around 300 BCE - probably the single most influential book on mathematics ever written.
The horizontal-axis waterwheel was invented in Alexandria around 240 BCE
Hipparchus discovered and described a Supernova and created the first star catalogue calculating positions of the stars by Precession, in 135 BCE - essentially the start of modern astronomy, building on both Greek and Middle Eastern predecessors.
In the first century CE Democritus wrote the first known 'textbook' on Alchemy, the Four Books, basing his study on a combination of Egyptian metallurgical knowledge and Greek natural philosophy
In that same century, by 70 CE Dioscorides wrote Peri hules latrikes (better known by its Latin title: De Materia Medica), a 5 volume compendium of herbal and medicinal plants, the basis for virtually all natural pharmacopeas written since.
About 100 years later Klaudios Ptolemaios wrote the treatise on astronomy later known as the Almagest, the standard work on the subject for the next 1500 or so years, and a Geography of the classical world in which he accurately measured the circumference of the earth.
And finally, at the beginning of the 2nd century CE Claudius Galenus (Galen) wrote up his new research on anatomy, pharmacology, medical diagnosis - even covering mental illness: another set of works that influenced the field of medicine for the next 1000 years.

No question that the Greeks owed a lot to the earlier work done in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria - but they added to it a distinctly Non Religious outlook they called Natural Philosophy which, especially when turned lose in the concentration of knowledge and information represented by Alexandria's Museum/Library, took the original work far beyond anything that the Egyptians or Babylonians ever achieved. All Science, in the memorable phrase, "stands on the shoulders of Giants" - but Greek science produced some Giants of its own.

 

Some of my thoughts regarding the past few days' discussions.

Re: Deblobbing India, I absolutely would support Chola or Vijayanagara or another Dravidian empire being added as a separate civ.

Funnily enough, if I'm not mistaken there was another Indian guy some pages back who was opposed to deblobbing India. I can't understand why? Other than nationalism? It's not a blow against India to have two Indian civs, quite the opposite. I mean, I personally wouldn't mind if Tondo and Cebu were two different civs (or two different city-states, which is indeed kind of what they were). I just don't get it.

Having said that, I'm a bit surprised at Thenewwwguy's assertion that modern India has little to do with the Dravidians and vice-versa. While I'm not Indian or of Indian descent myself (one of my racist countrymen I was having a political argument with tried to insult me by saying I looked Indian once, does that count?), I was under the impression that South Indians, while taking pride in their Dravidian identity, are as proud to be Indian as North Indians are. I mean, South India is turning into the economic engine of India; Kerala, a South Indian state, has the highest HDI in India; Bengaluru, a South Indian city, is a tech hub, and South Indian states are starting to surpass North Indian states in per capita GDP.

And yes, I must agree with Zaarin that while Castro wasn't as bad as Mao or Stalin, that's a pretty low bar to clear, and I do not think he should be in Civ. I strongly suspect however that one's opinion on Castro is likely to be determined by where on the political spectrum one sits. I too also find it objectionable to insinuate that the Cuban exiles deserved what they got. Might as well say too that the boat people that left Vietnam after the war were mostly Vietnam's middle and upper classes and deserved to become refugees from their own country.

 

So your point is they should have early acces to Scientific Alliance?

 

Maybe we should de-blob Brittania further, and include the Welsh and Irish in the game.

 

They get spies at the start of the game, but they only have the "Steal Tech Boost" mission available until they reach the Diplomatic Service civic

 

Let's get back to the topic, shall we all? Epaminondas as an alternate leader for Greece, and yes, I am somewhat a Hellenophile.

 

It’s complicated. South Indians are proud to be Indian, but they also find India highly problematic. South India, specifically Kerala and Tamil Nadu, are the last bastion of Indian progressivism and, along with West Bengal, the last states where the BJP doesn’t have control. South India is generally opposed to the nationalism of things like hindu nationalism bcs of how it’s culture gets swept under the rug.

That said, it’s not like South India wants to break off from the rest of the country. they are ultimately happy being a part of india, but if you asked 10 million, 10 thousand or 10 South Indians whether they’d rather be states or autonomous regions, i’m fairly sure they’d choose the latter.

Well, yeah... Especially when China has thousands of years of history behind it with leaders who are far more interesting than Deng. I still think Wudi would be a great choice for the civ, but alas, we’ve just got Qin again. Not complaining provided Kublai Khan is a China alt though.

That said I think the perceptions of Deng are very interesting. It’s quite telling that the internet at large is fond of a leader who was responsible for a great number of deaths but is best known for making China more capitalist.

I am going to assert that you can extend this statement:

to any cold war leader, tbh.

 

To be fair the Greeks came up with the term for Eureka.

That was my assumption as well. I never particularly said that I was against de-blobbing India but I don't necessarily see a need for it in Civ 6 for a separate South Indian civ until we get rid of a civ called India altogether and also have a separate Mauryan and Mughal civ.

They are already in as city-states.
I expect the Irish to be a full civ in the future.

I am definitely a Hellenophile too but at this point I'm content with the number of Greek leaders we have.

 

Maybe given enough time
(In 50 years we could have Castro as we have Genghis Khan)!

 

Moderator Action: Removed part of post that ignored the moderator warning above. leif

A good idea! But I think for Civ 7. It's a great solution to add a second lilder for Greece and Macedonia in the DLC to vanilla. And in the seventh game I would like Firaxis to develop this idea and make the differences in “Greece” more different than just the leader's abilities: perhaps the acropolis can give one bonus to all leaders and different for each one at once. Well, and without Alexander, civilization is not civilization! The history of Ancient Greece is multifaceted: one leader can be responsible for war, another for politics, and the third (oh horror!) for culture. In addition, they can be combined with each other.
And I think it would be nice that India went the same way) This tip for Firaxis

 

I'd personally like the unique abilities for Greece in Civ 7 to be a combination of both science and culture. Greek philosophy was intertwined with scientific discoveries anyway.
From there we could have a separate diplomatic/political leader (Pericles) and then a more aggressive warlike leader (Alexander if they don't bring back Macedon or Leonidas/Gorgo again?).

 

Fair. I admit I specifically had astronomy on my mind, where the Greeks made no additions worth mentioning. The works of Hipparchus (what we know of them) and of Ptolemy are best described as transmitting Babylonian knowledge to a Greek audience (often misattributed to the Egyptians, who may or may not have been intermediaries). Even the Antikythera Mechanism is based on Babylonian computations. Ironically, the Greeks were much more innovative about astrology. The Babylonians believed that signs in the heavens were omens and that they were chiefly intended for states and kings; the Greeks decided the stars caused fate and were for everyone.

ETA: Realized too late that this sounds needlessly harsh. I'm certainly not downplaying the importance of the Almagest for later science nor Ptolemy's excellent synthesis of data nor his own additional observations.

That's called being lucky. If I had a time machine, my first stop would be AD 1054.

I came across a paper while doing research for my paper this quarter arguing that the -- Oh, wait, I read water wheel as water screw. Anyway, I saw a paper arguing the water screw was a Persian invention. I didn't read the paper as it wasn't relevant to my topic so I don't know how convincing the author's argument was, but someone at least is contesting Archimedes' iconic invention.

I'd rather see Greece as a culture/warfare civ. War was a huge part of Greek culture, including for Athens. On the contrary, Athens was quite the warmonger and hated by pretty much everyone for it.

 

Well either way that is one thing that wasn't originally Babylonian.
That being said Babylon can't build regular watermills in the game so there you go.

I'd rather not pigeonhole it into just culture and warfare like it's always been.
Just give Pericles a trireme UU and call it even.

 

Including Archimedes, who never claimed to have invented it. He described it in use in Egypt in around 234 BCE, and Diodorus mistakenly assumed that this meant he invented it. In fact, Strabo describes the Hanging Gardens as being irrigated by a water screw (although in fact, Strabo was going by accounts from Babylonians - he never saw the Gardens himself).
I suspect the paper you saw was from the research of Stephanie Dalley, who interpreted a cuneiform inscription from the time of Sennacherib of Assyria as indicating that water screws were being cast in bronze about 350 years before Archimedes.
In summary, Archimedes by his own testimony did not invent the Water Screw, it was already in use in Egypt and may have been in use (Dalley's translations and interpretations are not universally accepted) several hundred years earlier in Assyria/Babylon. Who invented it first, Babylonians, Assyrians, or someone else, is still an open question - at least until a cuneiform tablet comes out of the ground with a patent application for a Water Screw . . .

"War, the Father of us all" is the translated Greek phrase, part of which Victor Hansen used as the title for a book.
The only problem is, the Greeks fought mostly against each other, or as mercenaries for others, so a Military emphasis for Greece, I think, would have to be something different from the usual Gets More Generals, Has an OP UU, Never gets tired of fighting mechanic.

One possibility might be to allow the Greeks to 'rent' their units out, rather like a City State's armies getting levied but at the Greek players/AIs discretion as to how many and what type of units and who gets them for X turns. Since the renting AI/Player would have to pay an initial cost plus maintenance on the units for the (30 turns like the Heroes or Trade Routes?) duration of the Mercenary Contract, that would allow the Greek Civ to form more units than it can afford - pretty much what the Greek City States did IRL.

 

I was thinking the renting units out to other players would work well in a hypothetical Numidia or Italian civ, at least an Italian UU, as well.

Speaking of renting out unique units I hope more militaristic city states in the future get them as it feels kind of lackluster that only Lahore has it in this game, whereas we have many different unique improvements.
Though to be fair they just introduced Lahore and unique improvements were in the base game but hopefully that's a precedent they will continue.