The civ question is a very tricky question and does in my opinion depend on several factors:
- The map: Has it enough place for every civ? What does seem to be balanced?
- The gameplay: Every Civ needs to have interaction with several other civs and shouldn't be alone, in other words, most civ needs to have an opposite player (Rome-Carthage).
- Historical Simulation: That's what RFC is all about. So, the civ list and the gameplay need to make sure that Rome can conquer the mediterranean (without winning domination victory) so to make the spawning of byzantine not totally strange? And what to do with the Greeek successor states (Seleukia foremost?) that Alex should end up conquering? There shouldn't be too many "barbarian civs" in my opinion too. The gameplay doesn't differ that much, they would be in the same region of the map and you can save the spots ;-)
So, your map with the civs regions (excluding the ones with a ?):
Your list
We see there's
- room for the Hittites, but a enemy-relationship with egypt would be strange because of the distance.
- room for the Parthians as a northern persian horse raider people. They would also shake things up as there doesn't seem too much going on in the region if the greeks or romans don't invade
- Illyria has place, but it'd only interact with Rome, maybe the Celts and the Macedonians or as a source for pirate ships in the med. Does it really necessitate a single minor civ spot? (or playable on the other hand) The same thing with Etruria, but I do think we need one more civ in the region so that the Romans, Celts and Carthaginian don't feel so alone.
- Scythia would just be a barbarian nation in the spot of the huns and the Goths would just be a barbarian nation in the spot of the Germanic people. So for playability you could save the spot, but for historicity...
- The MAcedonians would quickly conquer half of the map and then collapse (historical).
- Seleukia has as a civ unfortunately no place, maybe if you'd scratch the hittites.
- How do you want to represent the asia minor civs like pergamon or bithnya? They would have place but we do not have room in the civ list. But the area looks empty.
- Babylon has a rather large undisputed mesopotamia for themselves. And nobody even mentionned the Assyrians (the three great empires: Egypt, Hethites, Assyrians?). So there's no place for another civ. But what about replacing babylon (just a city) with an empire (Assyria)?
- Rome would probably win a domination victory if it did what it historically did. So the civ Rome needs either to be designed specially but historical or ahistorical and like the other nations (like: in rl life rome won a domination victory, that doesn't have to be the case...)
- How do you want to design exactly the special cases of: Byzantium, Rome, Alex's Empire? (Byzantium being the big question here)
My list
