Civilization VII Civs and Leaders Wishlist [Not a Prediction]

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Easy. We focus on the people, not the political entities. Like with the Uzbeks, there were a few Uzbek states in history, there were Uzbek leaders, such as Muhammad Shayboniy. There is no need to go to Tamerlan and create a Timurid civ.

Then we should probably call Indonesia "Javanese" and split India into "Indo-Aryans" and "Dravidians", by that logic.

 

[Vahnstad]

Then we should probably call Indonesia "Javanese" and split India into "Indo-Aryans" and "Dravidians", by that logic.

Which is something i would support, though not with these terms.

I think both Indonesia and India are large enough that they could be further split. We have 20+ civilisations in Europe and our understanding of history is very Eurocentric, but India is basically as large as Europe and Indonesia has lots of history as well. You could have Malay, Javanese, Sundanese etc.

The terms i would use though are Majapahit for Indonesia, Vijayanagar (or Chola) for Dravidian. Maurya, Delhi and there are other options for Northern India. And that opens up Mughals or Timurids.

If this logic also applied to Europe, there would be no need for Spain, Portugal, France, Greeks, Byzantines etc... as they would all be part of Roman Empire. So I don't understand why overlap in Europe is okay, but why it is taboo for regions such as Central Asia, India and Indonesia and others.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Which is something i would support, though not with these terms.

I think both Indonesia and India are large enough that they could be further split. We have 20+ civilisations in Europe and our understanding of history is very Eurocentric, but India is basically as large as Europe and Indonesia has lots of history as well. You could have Malay, Javanese, Sundanese etc.

The terms i would use though are Majapahit for Indonesia, Vijayanagar (or Chola) for Dravidian. Maurya, Delhi and there are other options for Northern India. And that opens up Mughals or Timurids.

Probably because the majority of the world was shaped by Europe.
I don't mind the idea of splitting India, but I don't necessarily see the need to split Indonesia into two or more civs, especially if we go for the term Majapahit. They were originally going to call it that in Civ 5, but did go with the more familiar name of Indonesia.

 

[Krajzen]

I am still a fan of simply giving very diverse civs several alternate leaders and city lists, talks of splitting India and other such internally diverse civs always end up struggling with some headache-inducing problems of divisions, exlusion, representation, clashing city lists etc etc. How do we split India - by cultures, political entities, languages, regions, everything mixed? Just make "Indian" civ with one leader being from ancient Indo-Aryan north, another from medieval Dravidan south, and yet another from some more modern eras (I am great fan of Lakshmibai). We can even go crazy and give India like five leaders, with all Western civs having only one each.

Besides, India and Indonesia bith did end up united IRL, and it feels strange to have modern, atomic and information eras without such two major countries of massive importance. I'm also skeptical to the degree of enthusiasm Indians and Indonesians themselves would have for the idea of removing their modern united representatives in favour of some cherry picked separate ancient empires.

How do you imagine modern era looking? Cold War of America, Russia, China, Germany, Japan, and then suddenly there is no India but Maurya, Tamils and Marathas (to the exclusion of all other cultures of India)? Maybe to be consistent we should have not only 8 Indian civs but also 6 Chinese, 5 Arab, 4 Persian, 3 Indonesian, 3 German, 3 Greek, 2 Egyptian etc etc - the headache increases exponentially!

 

[Leucarum]

With the best will in the world we will have each civ at different points along the homogenized blob <-> unique snowflake spectrum. We can't pick an optimal level of blobbiness and make that work for everyone.

I like the criteria of "was this ever an united polity" as a determining whether something makes sense as a blob. It is why celts or native americans feel like verg egregious blobs but India and Indonesia don't... But still that criteria never rules out deblobbing further if a smaller subpolity existed, so we're gonna have these arguments forever?

 

[IgorS]

If this logic also applied to Europe, there would be no need for Spain, Portugal, France, Greeks, Byzantines etc... as they would all be part of Roman Empire. So I don't understand why overlap in Europe is okay, but why it is taboo for regions such as Central Asia, India and Indonesia and others.

This is not how this works. Spain, Portugal, France etc. were indeed part of the Roman Empire, but they were conquered lands, and the core of Rome was Italy.
And regardless, Spain, France, England, and even Serbia are all part of the Roman Empire in the Civ games because of the city lists that have cities that are the modern day Paris, Marseille, York, Nis, and so forth.

 

[FishFishFish]

there is no India but Maurya, Tamils and Marathas (to the exclusion of all other cultures of India)?

Not every culture in India needs to be represented in every civ game. Firaxis moved away from Polynesia by having a specific Maori civ and the same can be done here.

You can pick 1 Dravidian civ (ex: Tamil) as your representative and then cycle them out for another Dravidian civ (ex: Telugu) in the next iteration of Civ.

You can even make the cultures which didn't make it into the game as city states.

I'm also skeptical to the degree of enthusiasm Indians

It seems to have gone over well in aoe2 after they split their India civ.

 

[Evie]

The one who was in previous Civ games. It is a list with leaders who have "sat out" on Civ VI.

Amazingly, even THAT still covers two different Fredericks (not counting Barbarossa). - Frederick II Hohenzollern (the Prussian one) and Frederick II Hohenstauffen (the Holy Roman Emperor in the early 13th century). Old Fritz (Hohenzollern) was in Civ I and IV, but the Stupor Mundi (Hohenstauffen) was in Civ II. They both have a claim to return after sitting out many games.

I'm pretty sure you mean Hohenzollern, but frankly, to me, Hohenstauffen is probably even more interesting, as a patron of arts and the sciences, arch-adversary of the Pope and one of the few actual really strong candidates for dual-civ leaders (Germany and Italy).

 

[Lord Lakely]

This is not how this works. Spain, Portugal, France etc. were indeed part of the Roman Empire, but they were conquered lands, and the core of Rome was Italy.
And regardless, Spain, France, England, and even Serbia are all part of the Roman Empire in the Civ games because of the city lists that have cities that are the modern day Paris, Marseille, York, Nis, and so forth.

Rome's city list is always tricky though because you can restrict yourself to sticking to cities from present-day Italy. You can easily hit a list of 40-50 cities with a bit of base research. However, that's not entirely historically accurate.

The actually most important cities for the Romans though? Aside from Rome: Ravenna, Constantinople, Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria. Carthage and Athens not that far behind, followed by Lutetia (Paris) and Londinium (London). It's impossible to include all of them as a list given how key all of those cities (other than Ravenna) are to other Civs you'll want to include in your game.

With the best will in the world we will have each civ at different points along the homogenized blob <-> unique snowflake spectrum. We can't pick an optimal level of blobbiness and make that work for everyone.

I like the criteria of "was this ever an united polity" as a determining whether something makes sense as a blob. It is why celts or native americans feel like verg egregious blobs but India and Indonesia don't... But still that criteria never rules out deblobbing further if a smaller subpolity existed, so we're gonna have these arguments forever?

This is easily resolvable. Just add a layer between Civ-level and Leader-level in terms of abilities, that separates the Civs according to Empire/Dynasty.

I made a nice flowchart this morning that I posted in another topic, will gladly repost it here, using the example of the Roman Civ.

Spoiler :

Suddenly a lot of the ambiguity you're getting from blob civs and civs that are clear continuations of one another (Rome and Byzantium), or parallel Civs (such as Greece and Macedon) gets resolved. Obviously a casual isn't going to care much, but I think the devs should, if their objective is to make a game that is both fun and historically authentic.

There are a few Civs that are still a bit ambiguous - like where would you put the Timurids? I personally would put them as the sister Civ of the Mongols, but making them their own thing (as a Tatar Civ, which is how they're repped in AoE2) or a sister civ to the Ottomans (who are also Turkic) could both work. But I prefer them as Mongols, since they're a direct successor realm of the Mongol Empire. Anyway, you would be forced to place them somewhere if you want them, and that would define their identity in Civ if and when they eventually are included into the game. Which is great because the clear identity for each Civ and Leader is one of the biggest draws Civ has to its many clones.

There are definitely ways to deblobify Civs without making it too counterintuitive for the players, and ambiguous for CivFanatics such as you and I. And you do not even need to do it the way I suggest it. If I can think of a system, surely the folks over at Firaxis can think of one as well, and one that is presumably better than mine.

 

[Evie]

Considering that "blob" was coined in a civ context to refer to civs that never actually existed as any sort of cultural, political or social whole (Polynesia, Celts, Native America being the main culprits) , I have to say I find the recent usage to mean "a civ that absolutely does have actual existence but that isn't as specific as I'd like because I want to narrow it down to a specific region, culture or time period within that whole" feels more than ridiculously hyperbolic to me. China and Persia (to name just two) are most assuredly not blobs in any rational sense ; people are just borrowing the language to present the lack of their desired granularity as an objective problem of representation rather than a matter of preference, when it is very much the later.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

This is easily resolvable. Just add a layer between Civ-level and Leader-level in terms of abilities, that separates the Civs according to Empire/Dynasty.

I made a nice flowchart this morning that I posted in another topic, will gladly repost it here, using the example of the Roman Civ.

Spoiler :

[/URL]

Suddenly a lot of the ambiguity you're getting from blob civs and civs that are clear continuations of one another (Rome and Byzantium), or parallel Civs (such as Greece and Macedon) gets resolved. Obviously a casual isn't going to care much, but I think the devs should, if their objective is to make a game that is both fun and historically authentic.

There are a few Civs that are still a bit ambiguous - like where would you put the Timurids? I personally would put them as the sister Civ of the Mongols, but making them their own thing (as a Tatar Civ, which is how they're repped in AoE2) or a sister civ to the Ottomans (who are also Turkic) could both work. But I prefer them as Mongols, since they're a direct successor realm of the Mongol Empire. Anyway, you would be forced to place them somewhere if you want them, and that would define their identity in Civ if and when they eventually are included into the game. Which is great because the clear identity for each Civ and Leader is one of the biggest draws Civ has to its many clones.

There are definitely ways to deblobify Civs without making it too counterintuitive for the players, and ambiguous for CivFanatics such as you and I. And you do not even need to do it the way I suggest it. If I can think of a system, surely the folks over at Firaxis can think of one as well, and one that is presumably better than mine.

I feel like Byzantium is also ambiguous as it could realistically also share characteristics from a Greek civ.
That being said I wouldn't mind if similar civs shared similar architecture and infrastructure. For example all the Mediterranean Roman/Greek civs could have unique looking amphitheaters while Mesoamerican civs could all share ballcourt arenas etc.

 

[Patine]

I feel like Byzantium is also ambiguous as it could realistically also share characteristics from a Greek civ.
That being said I wouldn't mind if similar civs shared similar architecture and infrastructure. For example all the Mediterranean Roman/Greek civs could have unique looking amphitheaters while Mesoamerican civs could all share ballcourt arenas etc.

The Byzantie Empire is not really that similar to Ancient Greece, outside of language, at all. Virtually all other key traits that define a civ, in game, are completely different.
Although, clusters of related civ's with similar city design sharing city architecture graphics was a feature of Civ2 and Civ3.

 

[Lord Lakely]

The Byzantines spoke Greek because the empire was located in Greek-speaking lands. They're still Romans though.

 

[Patine]

They're still Romans though.

Up till Justinian, yes, whom many historians call, "the Last Roman Emperor." They became culturally, politically, architecturally, militarily, religiously, and organizationally VERY different after him, to the point that defaulting their endonym (which was also used, in various forms and contexts, by the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the First Bulgarian and Serbian Empires, Mussolini's irredentism, and the claims of secular authority of the Catholic Church) would be a bg stretch.

 

[IgorS]

Rome's city list is always tricky though because you can restrict yourself to sticking to cities from present-day Italy. You can easily hit a list of 40-50 cities with a bit of base research. However, that's not entirely historically accurate.

The actually most important cities for the Romans though? Aside from Rome: Ravenna, Constantinople, Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria. Carthage and Athens not that far behind, followed by Lutetia (Paris) and Londinium (London). It's impossible to include all of them as a list given how key all of those cities (other than Ravenna) are to other Civs you'll want to include in your game.

Actually having the same cities on Roman lists and other civs' lists is not that big of a problem because of the different names. Lutetia - Roman city. Paris - French city. Another aspect that should be considered is the role the civ in question has played in the city's founding and/or development. This is why you can find Finnish cities on the Swedish list, for instance. Although it can also be problematic in sensitive cases. Kyiv, Minsk, or Bishkek on the Russian city list can and will be considered offensive. So I agree with the general idea of focusing mainly on the "core" of the civ's territory.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The Byzantie Empire is not really that similar to Ancient Greece, outside of language, at all. Virtually all other key traits that define a civ, in game, are completely different.
Although, clusters of related civ's with similar city design sharing city architecture graphics was a feature of Civ2 and Civ3.

I should have clarified when I meant that Byzantium is no similar to Rome than it would be with a Greek civ. Therefore, I don't see the need to essentially combine two or three civs into one with shared characteristics.

Actually having the same cities on Roman lists and other civs' lists is not that big of a problem because of the different names. Lutetia - Roman city. Paris - French city. Another aspect that should be considered is the role the civ in question has played in the city's founding and/or development. This is why you can find Finnish cities on the Swedish list, for instance. Although it can also be problematic in sensitive cases. Kyiv, Minsk, or Bishkek on the Russian city list can and will be considered offensive. So I agree with the general idea of focusing mainly on the "core" of the civ's territory.

Having different names means they wouldn't be shared cities, though. There are multiple instances of this happening as demonstrated in the game. In fact, Aleppo is seen twice on Arabia's city list in civ 6, also as Halab the Arabic spelling.

 

[IgorS]

Having different names means they wouldn't be shared cities, though. There are multiple instances of this happening as demonstrated in the game. In fact, Aleppo is seen twice on Arabia's city list in civ 6, also as Halab the Arabic spelling.

Well, city lists in Civ games are far from being perfect...

Spoiler :

(they suck is what I really want to say)

 

[BuchiTaton]

I am still a fan of simply giving very diverse civs several alternate leaders and city lists, talks of splitting India and other such internally diverse civs always end up struggling with some headache-inducing problems of divisions, exlusion, representation, clashing city lists etc etc. How do we split India - by cultures, political entities, languages, regions, everything mixed?

There are not such struggle. The many possibilities are there but there are not real difficulty into just pick some of them with a defined design criteria.

Just make "Indian" civ with one leader being from ancient Indo-Aryan north, another from medieval Dravidan south, and yet another from some more modern eras (I am great fan of Lakshmibai). We can even go crazy and give India like five leaders, with all Western civs having only one each.

Leaders have many design elements attached to them still others are civ (proper) based, so pigeonhole leaders from Classical to Atomic, from very different regions, languages, religions and thematic focus to the common elements of an unified contemporary based India waste a lot of personality and uniques that each one of those cultures could enjoy going as solo civs. Talking about five alter leaders for the same civ likely would lead to some mingy designs.

Even in the historical base entities like the Chola empire were not realy triying "to be India" neither their legacy is linked only to the contemporary India.

Besides, India and Indonesia bith did end up united IRL, and it feels strange to have modern, atomic and information eras without such two major countries of massive importance. I'm also skeptical to the degree of enthusiasm Indians and Indonesians themselves would have for the idea of removing their modern united representatives in favour of some cherry picked separate ancient empires.

Then we have things like Scottish civ that not only is now part GB/UK but even many of their in-game design elements come from the period already under English dominance.

About Indian players, AoE2 splited off their already in-game Indian civ and the Indian players loved it.

How do you imagine modern era looking? Cold War of America, Russia, China, Germany, Japan, and then suddenly there is no India but Maurya, Tamils and Marathas (to the exclusion of all other cultures of India)?

How do you imagine classical Persia, Egypt and then suddenly Ghandi? Or Canada in ancient time anyway.

Maybe to be consistent we should have not only 8 Indian civs but also 6 Chinese, 5 Arab, 4 Persian, 3 Indonesian, 3 German, 3 Greek, 2 Egyptian etc etc - the headache increases exponentially!

Consistency is precisely one of the main reasons to have multiple civs from the Indian subcontinent. Yes, because those "Indian" empires are not just contemporary India but Pakistan, SriLanka and Bangladesh history.
6 Chinese? Maybe not 6 proper Chinese but things like Jurchen and Miao civs are as valid as Gauls or Cree civs (of course Tibet is a popular option but Firaxis would not dare to mess with chinese goverment).
5 Greek? Since CIV6s multi-leader Greece + Macedonia + Byzantium + a Greek leader for base Egypt is not enough, right?!
The others could justify some when those are like the options for "India" from very different eras, cultures, religions and thematics. For example Nusantara could easily provide a Dharmic Javanese civ + a Muslim Malay civ. Or the also elephant in the room classical Zoroastrian vs modern Muslim Iranian civs that are as unique as Byzantium is to Rome and Greece.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Three main thoughts reading a lot of these posts:

1) I would predict Civ VII will have much more simplistic UAs and may not even have LAs (Although I doubt it). FXS has mentioned seeing abilities like the Maori's or England's in VI was not fun and too complex. The takeaway is that we're more likely to get abilities like Gran Colombia's +1 movement for all units or Arabia's free great prophet instead of complicated leader abilities that synergize very specifically with a certain leader. To this end, I doubt they'd try to add in more complexity with something like having a "roman" civ that then has two seperate Byzantine and Roman branches. They'd rather just make two different civs with basic abilities.

2) Civ is known for, and is differentiated by their focus on leaders. I don't see unique leaders or leaders leading 2 different civs going away. Yeah it may not work as well as we hoped it would (See Eleanor-England and Kublai-Mongolia) but I see that mechanic returning alongside a bunch of new leaders. Tbh, I don't see why the option of it is such a bad thing apart from it being the only thing. Alexander would definitely be a solid choice for a miliary-focussed greek civ but why not give him the option to lead other ones if he was strongly associated with them? If Civ is focussing on leaders then it just gives more variety. However, I would see it as a major problem if multi-leader civs take away the opportunities from other civs (i.e. Alexander instead of two different Achenemid leaders) to get more distinct leaders to that particular Civ...so it just depends how they handle it. But again since leaders are core to Civ so I don't see variety as a problem. Plus it may make for more interesting/ unexpected gameplay down the line as more DLC and mechanics are inevitably added.

3) We don't know how many civs there will be. I would go all in at least 60 unique civs this time given we had 50 in VI. If they really hold themselves to less complex abilities and less stylization, they may be able to fit in more and instead. In that case, having more diverse civs (i.e. Phoenicia+Carthage, Mauryans+Mughals+Tamils+India, Rome+Italy etc.) representing the same region is a no brainer. But we don't know what is FXS is cooking up for the full list and how specific they'll be.

Given the state of the gaming world we're definitely going to have Civ VII for probably the next decade at least. It took 9 years for VI-->VII so it's going to be a LONG haul with this game. Which gives them a lot more time to add in more civs and more leaders. So I wouldn't be surprised if they start getting more specific and forgo having blob civs unless their major fan favorite (i.e. India) or culturally acceptible (i.e. China). Hell I wouldn't be surprised if they do Germany, Austria AND the HRE (And I'll riot if we dont' get Italian representation again lmao). Anyways...it all depends but look at how much DLC makes for GTA V and all that. Civ would definitely want in on that with such a long-term game being made, VII will likely skew towards a lot of leaders, a lot of civs, and a lot of options. Just my two cents.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Actually having the same cities on Roman lists and other civs' lists is not that big of a problem because of the different names. Lutetia - Roman city. Paris - French city. Another aspect that should be considered is the role the civ in question has played in the city's founding and/or development. This is why you can find Finnish cities on the Swedish list, for instance. Although it can also be problematic in sensitive cases. Kyiv, Minsk, or Bishkek on the Russian city list can and will be considered offensive. So I agree with the general idea of focusing mainly on the "core" of the civ's territory.

The Rosetta Dynamic City names mode has an even more elegant solution. It creates tags for every name, so you don't have Lutetia and Paris in the same game. I think that may be a good solution for overlapping names (and it saves us the stupidity of Arabia having Aleppo on their list twice. )