[NFP] Civilization VI: Possible New Civilizations Thread

[Terminacarnival]

Baseless tinfoil hat theory that will not happen but I want to write it up before the reveal.

Venice is a red herring and it's a Portugal and Italy pack

Italy's ability is that they cannot train settlers but instead extra city state settlers spawn in locations around them that which form Italian city states with no unique suzerain bonus. Italy gains the old city state envoy bonuses in addition to the one built into the diplomatic quarters. gains an extra free envoy upon meeting the cities, along with an envoy to each upon entering the Renaissance era. Italy receives Great People points from districts built in Italian City-states and may activate great people in Italian city states. Tourism generated by Italian City states is counted as part of Italy.

Giusseppe Giribaldi leads Italy based in Turin. He generates no population loss or grievances and instead gains a burst of loyalty and the city-states yield from capturing an Italian city state. Upon entering the industrial era, gains a combat bonus against city states after the industrial era.

I personally hate how ridiculous and unbalanced this would be and I know it will be wrong due to the simple fact that Venice showed up on its own in the stream. The thought just hit me today about a gimmicky city state conglomerate happening.

 

[AntSou]

Baseless tinfoil hat theory that will not happen but I want to write it up before the reveal.

Venice is a red herring and it's a Portugal and Italy pack

That sounds like a lot of trouble to go through, but it would be pretty funny.

I personally hate how ridiculous and unbalanced this would be and I know it will be wrong due to the simple fact that Venice showed up on its own in the stream. The thought just hit me today about a gimmicky city state conglomerate happening.

You could have a Italy Civ which applies double pressure from loyalty to city-states. Italy then retains the suzerain bonus from any City-State which it flips into its Empire, and for as long as they control that city. OP, maybe, but sounds fun to me .

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I highly recommend this book:

It's a collection of excerpts on the subject matter mentioned above, including excerpts from Imagined Communities and Nations and Nationalism, and the quickest way to delve into the subject matter that I know of. I found it extremely useful several years ago. Karl Deutsch's approach is also unique and worth a read.

There's some truly awesome stuff here. I don't think I've ever used as much underlining and highlighting in a book as I did with that one.

YES! I agree! Check it out - Anderson, Gellner are both in there, along with Geertz and Giddens. FANTASTIC. Good pick.

FYI, if you're low on cash, a lot of these essays can be found online.

 

[8housesofelixir]

You could have a Italy Civ which applies double pressure from loyalty to city-states. Italy then retains the suzerain bonus from any City-State which it flips into its Empire, and for as long as they control that city. OP, maybe, but sounds fun to me .

I always wonder if adding more ways to interact with CS - currently we only have envoy, levying, and war - is feasible in terms of programming (and time constrain). More approaches to interact with CS is always welcome.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Separate some aspects of history from personal preferences here because this discussion and arguments become ridiculously serious. The fact you would like to see some Civs in a game even if you can rationalize your picks the best way you can don't mean everybody should think your way. And please do not pretend there are some objective criteria behind it.

We have never ever ever talked about what the devs will or probably will do without contextualizing it as such. Most of our discussions here revolve around what we’d like to see or what we think should appear. If this thread was just what we think will happen or what the devs will do, it wouldn’t drag on for 371 pages. Your anger with this thread, and with me, is based on misunderstanding—we are not (and have never) claimed to have objective knowledge of what the devs will do. We have, however discussed objective and factual criteria to what defines a civilization, and objective and factual criteria for what historic cultures would be best defined as a civilization for this game. If you didn’t understand that, I’m sorry, but that’s what we’ve done. That’s what we were doing. That’s what we’ll keep doing, because it’s fun, and we all enjoy the presence of other history nerds who can argue the merits of the Kushans being added to civ good well knowing they will never be added to civ.

I think it's appropriate to discuss the extent to which the idea of "a civilization" does or does not line up with "a nation," "a state," "a culture" (whatever that might mean), or "a blob", but on the same level you've got to have a game where you start as X and your friend starts as Y and you have an equal chance to <utterly destroy the other> win the game according to the (Westphalian) rules that it's set down. It's a balance - thinking outside the box and making a playable game.

Totally agree, and I appreciate Humankind’s willingness to subvert the civilization/empire label for a cultural one, making the definition of what qualifies as a playable faction a little more clear (of course, culture in itself is very much abstract, and many of Humankind’s so-called cultures end up being nations or countries rationalized as cultures). I think Civ would benefit from calling its factions ‘nations’, specifically using Benedict Anderson’s label of an imagined community: its more concrete than the abstractions of a civilization, empire or culture, yet still allows for some subjective manipulation. It also would force firaxis to reckon with the blobs which are Arabia, Persia, India, China and Indonesia, and develop ways to go forward in that regard.

I highly recommend this book:

It's a collection of excerpts on the subject matter mentioned above, including excerpts from Imagined Communities and Nations and Nationalism, and the quickest way to delve into the subject matter that I know of. I found it extremely useful several years ago. Karl Deutsch's approach is also unique and worth a read.

There's some truly awesome stuff here. I don't think I've ever used as much underlining and highlighting in a book as I did with that one.

Gelner and Anderson were the first readings we did in Comparative Politics, since nation is often used interchangeably with country or state, even though none of them mean the same thing.

Baseless tinfoil hat theory that will not happen but I want to write it up before the reveal.

Venice is a red herring and it's a Portugal and Italy pack

This isn’t as unreasonable as one might think. While Venice arguably was culturally Italian, linguistically, Venetian is fairly different, being a Gallo-Romance language rather than a Italic Romance language. Even culturally, Venice was fairly unique compared to the rest of the Italian city states, which while differing, did actually share a lot in common with each other that they didn’t with Venice. Politically, Venice also had a lot more political power than any other italian city state, and was an empire in its own right, something no other italian city state could claim. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable for the devs to consider Italy differnet enough from Venice that both could exist—one as a city state, and one as a civ.

Of course, this doesn’t discount the possibility that we could finally be getting the Genoa civ we expected back when we found out it was planned in the base game, or a Tuscany civ, or a Florence, or a Naples civ, for that matter.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Religion is historically a deciding factor for marking the boundaries/identities between different ethical groups, or even races (see: the identification of what is "Jewish" and what isn't in Medieval Europe and even in Nazi Germany). I am not Polish nor Catholic but I feel like the religion point is worth defending.

And religion is not even the "simplest" deciding factor for creating different identities in human history. The initial difference between Canadians and Americans was the more simpler "I'm loyal to the King and you are not". For us the modern people this might sound meh, but 200 years earlier that's a serious matter - which also greatly contribute to our interminable discussion about what IS a Civ and what isn't, since many "civilizations" and even modern nation-states as we know of was born from having a different religious belief or a different political belief with the majority.

Indeed. I don't think many modern Westerners living in societies that have largely compartmentalized religion really appreciate how profound a role religion has played in history or in cultural identity. It's also worth noting that this compartmentalization of religion is the direct result of religion: societies that were fractured by the Protestant Reformation had to find a way to keep society coherent in the face of the fact that Jan is Catholic, his neighbor is Reformed, his cousin is Lutheran, and his co-worker is an Anabaptist. You'll note that Orthodox, Muslim, and Eastern societies, that didn't undergo similar religious fragmentation, are also less secular. Moral of the story: in most societies before 1517, cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion) was very much a thing: being Polish was inseparable with being a Catholic; being Greek was inseparable with being Orthodox; being a Turk was inseparable with being a Muslim; etc. If you wanted to change religion, you also had to change culture--and residency, unless you liked being burned at the stake for apostacy.

Oh no I don't think there's anything wrong with noting a clear cultural distinction between Poland vs. any other slavic state. It doesn't have remotely the same culture as Bohemia, Russia, Ukraine, or the south slavic states. Poland is just as distinct as any other European nation, and the analogy between blobbing the slavic countries and the Native Americans holds I think.

I was just noting a lot of energy invested to defend...Polish pride? Lol. I have no Polish pride. That's like being proud of being a Sagittarius. We all come from somewhere, but most of us don't come from anywhere particularly amazing (and even if we did, that sort of essentialist source of self-worth is kind of outdated and toxic, exactly the sort of thing fascism thrives on).

This isn’t as unreasonable as one might think. While Venice arguably was culturally Italian, linguistically, Venetian is fairly different, being a Gallo-Romance language rather than a Italic Romance language. Even culturally, Venice was fairly unique compared to the rest of the Italian city states, which while differing, did actually share a lot in common with each other that they didn’t with Venice. Politically, Venice also had a lot more political power than any other italian city state, and was an empire in its own right, something no other italian city state could claim. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable for the devs to consider Italy differnet enough from Venice that both could exist—one as a city state, and one as a civ.

Of course, this doesn’t discount the possibility that we could finally be getting the Genoa civ we expected back when we found out it was planned in the base game, or a Tuscany civ, or a Florence, or a Naples civ, for that matter.

I think you're confusing Western Romance with Gallo-Romance? Although Venetian is sometimes disputedly categorized with the Italo-Dalmatian languages of southern Italy, it is usually classified with the Gallo-Italic languages of northern Italy, which, although still "Italian" inasmuch as northern, Lombardic Italy is Italian, are grouped with the Western Romance languages separate from Italo-Romance languages. Gallo-Romance is a subfamily of Western Romance including the Oil languages of Northern France.

That said, even if the language is still very much Italian, I do agree with you that it is not inconceivable that Venice could be considered separate from an Italy civ. Although personally I think it would be quite callous to do so since the only period we care about in Italian history is the renaissance, and the only time they united in a league was conducted in Venice. I don't really want a renaissance Italy without Venice lol. Tuscany, maybe, but not all of Italy.

EDIT: I just checked a bit more: apparently Gallo-Romance can also informally refer to a broader grouping including France, Catalan, and northern Italian languages. So, you're not actually wrong, we're both right and linguistics is stupid.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

Baseless tinfoil hat theory that will not happen but I want to write it up before the reveal.

Venice is a red herring and it's a Portugal and Italy pack

Italy's ability is that they cannot train settlers but instead extra city state settlers spawn in locations around them that which form Italian city states with no unique suzerain bonus. Italy gains the old city state envoy bonuses in addition to the one built into the diplomatic quarters. gains an extra free envoy upon meeting the cities, along with an envoy to each upon entering the Renaissance era. Italy receives Great People points from districts built in Italian City-states and may activate great people in Italian city states. Tourism generated by Italian City states is counted as part of Italy.

Giusseppe Giribaldi leads Italy based in Turin. He generates no population loss or grievances and instead gains a burst of loyalty and the city-states yield from capturing an Italian city state. Upon entering the industrial era, gains a combat bonus against city states after the industrial era.

I personally hate how ridiculous and unbalanced this would be and I know it will be wrong due to the simple fact that Venice showed up on its own in the stream. The thought just hit me today about a gimmicky city state conglomerate happening.

You want a tinfoil hat theory? I will give you a tinfoil hat theory!

Venice IS the second civ of the September pack.

"But, you're stupid and dumb and ugly!" You'll say. "We saw it as a city-State! They wouldn't had made a red-herring that far-fetched that creating a whole city-State just for a false link!"

And you're right.

But, what if... you actually play as a city-State?

Hear me!

Venice:
CUA - Stato dal Mar : all other players consider you as a city-State (they can send you envoy, levy your armies, conquer you). Begin the game with Ancient Walls and use the same Tech/Civic tree as city-States. The civilization with the most Envoys gain your suzerainty bonus (maritime trade routes cannot be plundered). You cannot train settlers nor gain new cities. Each envoy received from a major civilization gives you +1 Trade Route capacity and +1 Combat Strength against major civilizations. With all other victory conditions, you also win the game if your Suzerain with the game. Maritimes trade routes cannot b plundered. Begin the game on a coastal tile and can found city on coastal tiles.

Don't know for the Leader or UU/UI (but I can see a LUA around maritime carfare), but wouldn't it be wonderful? YEAH! RIGHT! ITALY IS PLAYABLE, BEACH! HAHAHAHA ANOTHER VICTORY FOR LOGIC!

 

[ButtBillionaire]

I might be biased, but I am personally not a fan of returning to the practice of merging Denmark, Norway and Sweden into each other or actively letting one of them represent the entire region. They can represent the same periods of time in their own ways, but they are not the same. I would much rather prefer the one-leader-leads-multiple model Civ6 introduced, but even then it feels bittersweet for Norway to be introduced as a separate civ just to be ruled by a Danish or Swedish leader anyway.

As far as the next DLC is concerned, if it indeed turns out to be a Europe-themed pack, I am operating on the same theory that Portugal and Byzantium will not be introduced together, as they are both strongly requested heavy-hitters, which potential marketing-wise would be wasted if they were included together. If I had to choose, I believe Portugal will come first, as I'm sure an extreme minority of video game enthusiasts identify themselves as Byzantine. If this turns out to be the case, I fear that whatever the mystery civ might be will not be given the time of day by fans due to "taking" the slot that was "supposed" to be given to either Portugal or Byzantium. I wouldn't be surprised (though still disappointed) if I saw a significant amount of dislikes on that civ's first look video.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Please can we get back to the topic of speculating which civs we may possibly see in the New Frontier Pass. All this other stuff is way off topic.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

We have, however discussed objective and factual criteria to what defines a civilization, and objective and factual criteria for what historic cultures would be best defined as a civilization for this game.

And this is disputable because those are criteria of this forum (at least part of this forum), not all fans. The true anger here I see every time someone wants to question those dogmas. We really need more distance. Any viable criteria here are defined by developers, not us We may only express our expectations. Personal expectations. And this is the point of our discussion here. I just want to calmly mark we are not a center of the universe

My guesses for today are Portugal and Ireland (not because I want them badly). Those Civs seem probable for me based on previous developer's picks. And Yeah NA Natives are still in the game and are very likely. And I am much more concerned if they will be well designed and fun to play. I would like to see the possibility of movable districts and it would fit fine for them in my opinion. From a gameplay perspective. What culture would fit best for this mechanic what you think?

 

[Venceslau Pietro Pietra]

I dont know how to explain but i have a felling that Philippines is coming for this pack, no proof neither evidence just a wild guess.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I dont know how to explain but i have a felling that Philippines is coming for this pack, no proof neither evidence just a wild guess.

when would it come? Jan is the East Asia, if not the whole asia, pack and we already know it’s vietnam and kublai khan

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

My guesses for today are Portugal and Ireland (not because I want them badly). Those Civs seem probable for me based on previous developer's picks. And Yeah NA Natives are still in the game and are very likely. And I am much more concerned if they will be well designed and fun to play. I would like to see the possibility of movable districts and it would fit fine for them in my opinion. From a gameplay perspective. What culture would fit best for this mechanic what you think?

I really don't think movable districts would fit any of them. The movable districts would sound like it would go to a Plains tribe. But then again it's not like the Plains tribe really built settlements in the first place for districts to go down. I guess the most reasonable would be the Comanche, who had an empire.
Honestly that would have fit better for maybe Mongolia though.

As for my guesses I'm still going with my gut feeling of Assyria and Byzantines.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

I really don't think movable districts would fit any of them. The movable districts would sound like it would go to a Plains tribe. But then again it's not like the Plains tribe really built settlements in the first place for districts to go down. I guess the most reasonable would be the Comanche, who had an empire.
Honestly that would have fit better for maybe Mongolia though.

As for my guesses I'm still going with my gut feeling of Assyria and Byzantines.

moveable districts would seemingly also work for the berbers.

i will also guess Assyria and the Byz, with an outside shot at Hittites and the Byz

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

moveable districts would seemingly also work for the berbers.

True about the Berbers. I'm still not sure how a moveable district would work though unless somehow you had moveable cities too?

 

[Jeppetto]

I don't see anything ahistorical. If they can be consuls, surely they can be kings, too.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

True about the Berbers. I'm still not sure how a moveable district would work though unless somehow you had moveable cities too?

moveable cities would also theoretically work for the berbers

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

moveable cities would also theoretically work for the berbers

Right but gameplay wise I'm wondering how it would work? The only way I think it could work is if you do like a city project and then a settler appears where the city was. Everything that was built around it basically gets razed though.

I feel like that's counterintuitive to the game unless you use it after taking over an opponents city.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

If they're going to do moveable cities, there needs to be limits.

At some point a group of people reach a certain threshold where they have inertia of place. It becomes more feasible to divert resources to the city rather than have the city move to the resources.

So maybe cities can't move after they reach population level 10.

 

[Jeppetto]

Well I think moveable district feature is far far far beyond the scope of programming of the Pass. You can't even "cancel" district contruction, once it's placed, even If you don't contruct it for even a single Turn, it can't be moved, likely because it was easier, clearier and less spaghetti-inducing way of designing it. I would be afraid Civ simply wasn't build for that and it would need more work than the Pass would allow, given the design of the three civs we have so far.

Naturally, I am all for unique designs so would like to be pleasantly surprised.