Civs discussion thread

[Rhye]

I think we can go with this list:

Egypt
Babylonia
Phoenicia
Hittites
Israel
Celts
Athens
Sparta
Persia
Macedonia
Carthage
Rome
Huns
Byzantium
Etruria (not playable, minor nation)
Germanic Tribes (not playable, minor nation)
Independent (not playable, minor nation)
Independent2 (not playable, minor nation)

Anybody wants to suggest accurate starting dates?

 

[Úmarth]

I too would include the Goths in with the rest of the Germans. There are simply too many barbarian peoples in that time frame to represent them all so I say lump them into three groups: Celts (Gauls, Galatians, Britons, Celtiberians, etc) which would basically hang menacingly around unsettled Europe for most of the game; Germans (so all the various proto-German tribes and then the Goths, Vandals, Franks and Saxons in the migration period) which would appear later and be a lot more aggressive in attacking than the Celts; and the Scythians/Saka (encompassing the Sarmatians, Alans, Rhoxolani, Cimmerians, Aorsi, Avars, etc etc etc) which should make settling in steppe regions pretty much impossible and occasionally form formidable hordes without warning. Then the Huns would be a single massive invasion from the east I guess, preceded by the other Barbarians being pushed towards the Mediterranean.

You've got to have Scythia in, otherwise the steppe nomads aren't distinctly represented until the Huns arrive and that's really unforgivable. Like I said, the Goths can go comfortably in with the other Germans. Parthia you can live without too because they're basically just a Persian dynasty which happened to come from slightly outside of Persia proper. Illyria is a really small area, probably not more than one or two cities I would guess and just there as prey for the Romans as Greeks so they can just be indies. But the Hittites it would be really good to have in. Perhaps they could replace Byzantium? After all the Empire wasn't finally partitioned until 395 and you're stopping in 600AD.

Edit: you posted the finished list while I was writing my post. I hope you will reconsider the Scythians though: invasions from the steppe were a big historical force in this period and it seems somewhat unjust to give the Celts and Germans a seperate identity but leave the steppe nomads as standard "barbarians".

 

[Úmarth]

Start dates

Egypt
3000BC, obviously. The Old Kingdom was created around 3150.

Babylonia
1700BC - middle of the reign of Hammurabi according to the short chronology.

Phoenicia
Hard to say, Wikipedia says there's debate and I don't know the first thing about it.

Hittites
1700BC as well, according to the Anitta text

Israel
Again I'll leave this one to someone who knows more about it.

Celts
Tricky one. I would argue the Celts never were a civilization - no cities, never unified politically, not even that unified culturally (because of course the Celts probably didn't call themselves Celts, that's just what the Romans and Greeks called them). If they're just going be glorified barbs like they are in RFC then you could go back as far as you like. Like I said, Celt is a misnomer so applying it to Bronze Age people is only slightly more wrong than applying it to Iron Age people. And the ancestors of what we now call Celts probably go right back to the earliest Neolithic settlers of western Europe.

Athens
The archaeology of the sites goes back past 3000BC (there was a Hill Fort there and then a Mycenaean settlement). But you're probably talking somewhere around 900BC for Athens proper.

Sparta
Same deal, but Lycurgus was supposed to have been born in 800BC.

Persia
550BC, foundation of the Achaemenid empire.

Macedonia
Around 800BC according to legend.

Carthage
I have literally no idea.

Rome
Why quibble with Varro, 753BC?

Huns
370AD is apparently when they arrived on the Pontic Steppe, according to Wikipedia. Or maybe it would be better to take the accession of Attila - 434AD.

Byzantium
395, the death of Theodosius I and the final partition.

Etruria
800BC ish.

Germanic Tribes
About 200BC is when the Romans start writing about them expanding into Celtic land (and thus coming onto the RFCGW map from Scandanavia).

 

[Charles Martel]

I strongly suggest to replace the Hittites with ARMENIA . Hittites can be then re-introduced as an early dynamic name of Armenia.

The history of the Kingdom of Armenia spans almost 1000 years, from 600 BC to 387 AD (after which it was split between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia, and became a client state of Byzantium until 428). At its greatest extend, under Tigranes the Great, it stretched from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas.

 

[Metal Alloy Man]

Edit: you posted the finished list while I was writing my post. I hope you will reconsider the Scythians though: invasions from the steppe were a big historical force in this period and it seems somewhat unjust to give the Celts and Germans a seperate identity but leave the steppe nomads as standard "barbarians".

I agree here, because you can't justify that the Huns represent the steppe area because they'll spawn so much later and migrated/spread so far west.

 

[micbic]

Byzantium
395, the death of Theodosius I and the final partition.

I would favor 325 for that, the movement of the Roman capital to Constaninople.

 

[SadoMacho]

Rhye, what's you vision of Babylonia? Is it Babylonia or any Mesopotamian civ like in RFC? Maybe a Sumerian civ replacing the Huns could be nice. I realy see the Huns ad an invasion of barbarians

 

[onedreamer]

Rome
Why quibble with Varro, 753BC?

Etruria
800BC ish.

Let me quibble a bit here. Sure, Rome is said to be founded in that date, however we are talking of the Roman civilization here, so I would really delay its start to when it lost the etruscan influence of its kings (since the etruscans are also a civ). Hence Rome could appear as indipendent in 753 and as civ in 509. This way if Rome will flip the nearest etruscan city (Veii ?) it will at least make sense historically.
The Etruscans should start earlier, say 900 BC, and they should be playable if "civs" like Sparta and Celts are. If anything, since Etruscans had strong celtish influences, but were definitely more civilized and most importantly more in contact with the majors, I'd make them playable and Celts a minor.

 

[King Coltrane]

just to put it out there, i think we also need assyria, specifically the neo assyrian empire of around 934-612 BCE. They were the first "world empire" in the sense that they were the first to control all of mesopotamia, egypt, much of Elam, and much of southern anatolia. They were basically unrivaled at their height, controlling EVERYTHING. granted they had massive stability problems, but they still were hugely important. They destroyed the northern kingdom of israel in 720 bce. they also destroyed the city of Lachish in 701 bce and almost took the kingdom of judah too, but were paid off instead. they also had the best army in the ancient world, with the largest area of force projection, excepting rome. They were also the best siegers in the ancient world, with manuals detailing the 4 methods for assaulting cities) and even pioneered in the area of biological warfare (ergot). they made huge palaces and were experts at propaganda. They also had a distinct culture that flourished especially under ashurbanipal.

UB: Puppet's palace: adds minor stability, +x% maintenance, -2 happy faces.
UU: a) battering ram. available earlier than other siege weapons, maybe movement of 2
or b) Assyrian infantry: armed with the first standard issue equipment, maybe +1 strength, comes with city raider 1, and i wouldnt have any problem with a movement of 2 either, but that may be a bit much.
UP: The Power of the King: Palace generates 100% espionage, or +3 exp per 10% on the espionage slider

UHV: 1) Conquer Mesopotamia (including syria) by 700 BC
2) Have a standing army of 100 units by 600 BC(?)
3) conquer or make vassals of Israel, Judah (or both if its 1 civ) and Egypt.

ANYWAY, this all goes to the mesopotamian question for this mod. IE how do we represent them? they were not 1 civ, in the same way that greece was not 1 civ. there are many ways to go: the standard babylon of Hammurabi, the babylon of Nebuchadrezzar II, Ur3 was a scientific and cultural center VERY early, Uruk of gilgamesh, Agade of Sargon 1 (first empire in the world), as well as many others, but those are the highlights. honestly, i dont know which one is best? probably the way to go is to have babylon (of both Ham and Neb) but have it start at 3000 bce and have an initial challenge be to survive the attacks of indy Agade? that could be fun.

Sorry to drag on, but Phoenecia and Israel should both spawn at around 1000 BCE, maybe david would make israel a little earlier, but its still close enough. Solomon was probably around 1000, as was Hiram of Tyre, who helped him build his temple. Tyre, of course, was a major Phoenician city. Both civs kinda sprouted up in the wake of the sea peoples destruction/collapse of the Bronze Age cultures.

UHV: 1) dont lose a city before 2334 (thats the sargon survival one)
2) Build First Law Code (great wonder) in Babylon by 1750 BCE, Hanging Gardens and Ishtar Gate by 600 BCE
3) control Mesopotamia, Syria, and the entire Levant by 600 BCE (580 if you wanna get technical, but whatever)

 

[ZachScape]

Let me quibble a bit here. Sure, Rome is said to be founded in that date, however we are talking of the Roman civilization here, so I would really delay its start to when it lost the etruscan influence of its kings (since the etruscans are also a civ). Hence Rome could appear as indipendent in 753 and as civ in 509. This way if Rome will flip the nearest etruscan city (Veii ?) it will at least make sense historically.
The Etruscans should start earlier, say 900 BC, and they should be playable if "civs" like Sparta and Celts are. If anything, since Etruscans had strong celtish influences, but were definitely more civilized and most importantly more in contact with the majors, I'd make them playable and Celts a minor.

I have done SO much research on the Etruscans, and can right of 50 page essay (and I usually hand school essays in 3 months late) on why I think they could be good (no scratch that...great!) for gameplay. I have bookmarked half a dozen pages on them, and could be a good UHV challenge to the human.

 

[merijn_v1]

UB: Puppet's palace: adds minor stability, +x% maintenance, -2 happy faces.

UP: The Power of the King: Palace generates 100% espionage, or +3 exp per 10% on the espionage slider

So you want a palace thats worse than the standard palace (IMO) with only has a little bit of stability and 4 espionage. What you are saying is the 1st UP is: +2 espionage in only 1 city in the whole game.

 

[King Coltrane]

Well i was thinking in terms of a palace that would be built in cities OTHER than the capital, meaning it is NOT the capital... think of them as minor Forbidden palaces... while the UP relates to the MAIN PALACE IN THE CAPITAL. Maybe +100% isnt enough for that, but i was thinking it could apply as +100% throughout the empire, so if your empire is producing 100 espionage points per turn, the UP would make it 200... though i think the +3 experience (FOR UNITS) per 10% espionage would be best.

sorry if i was unclear.

 

[ZachScape]

I like the second part of the UP, sort of. It could be dangerously abused. Before a unit gets created, all the player has to do is slide it up to 100%. Do you really want an army of chariots roaming about with 300+ XP?

 

[mitsho]

Generally, the problem with this mod is that there are few continuing civs that can respawn. If egypt respawns in normal RFC, it's still Egypt, if the Hittites respawn in 200 AD, they are... ? Again, some civ just aren't supposed to last...

But Rhye, you haven't answered one of my basic questions: How do you plan to handle Byzantium? And how do you plan to model the roman and Alexandrian conquests and - in the latter case - their offspring empires?

(Macedonia and Egypt can be modelled by dynamic civ naming, but what about seleukia and the other asia-minor civs? a solution could be to let the Hittites be two civs, their respawn being another country)

The spawn date list (copied partially from umarth)

I think we can go with this list:

Egypt - 3000 BC
Babylonia - 3000 BC (earlier because you need two starting civs... ;-) I would otherwise suggest to move the start date up to around 2000 BC ....)
Phoenicia - 1500 BC (says German wikipedia, 800 BC conquered by Assyrians and later New Babylonians)
Hittites - 1700BC
Israel - 1300 BC (or: shortly after the Phoenicians, so that the two near placed civs can coexist without the spawning of the latter killing the first...)
Celts - 700 BC (they were a civ! so early as they need time for the big land they occupy and the tricky environment, non-choppable forests...)
Athens - 900 BC
Sparta - 800 BC
Persia - 550 BC
Macedonia - 400 BC (depending on how much time gameplay needs; they conquered the world in around 20 years (350-330) and then were the small country again... how to represent?)
Carthage - 600 BC (founded 8th or 9th century, but in 6th century, became independent when Tyros got conquered by the Persians)
Rome - 500 BC (out of the blue, i think it's dependent on gameplay)
Huns - 370 AD (the historical date, you could make them earlier to simulate other barbs...)
Byzantium - 325 AD (movement of capital to constantinople, depending on the hun spawn
Etruria (not playable, minor nation) - 800 BC
Germanic Tribes (not playable, minor nation) - 200 BC or rather all the time as barbs...
Independent (not playable, minor nation)
Independent2 (not playable, minor nation)

Anybody wants to suggest accurate starting dates?

1) We have many civs spawning in the same time frame this way (1000 BC - 500 BC). Doesn't seem good. Maybe a special time and turn frame that gives many turns to a special time in the middle and then accelerates again when we have fewer civs (rome, carthage, celts, greeks, egypt and in the east only persia).

2) RFGW seems to follow an odd scheme. In RFC, the amount of civs present rises with the game time. In the modern era, there is the most going on, most civ present, most map populated. In "600 AD", we would in RFGW only have - if historical - a big Roman Empire and Persia that both crumble to barbarians, not really interesting. So maybe the mod could end earlier with the height of the Roman empire and eliminate the Huns thus?

3) On the other side, at the start not much is going on. I would thus advocate pushing the start date to a later time (babylon only spawned that late, the sumerians were earlier though). At the beginning you would have for quite a long time only 1 (or 2) civs only prolonging loading time. On the other hand, you can use the extra turns later on ;-)

4) "Civ Clusters/Opponents"
Rome-Carthage-Celts
Athens-Sparta-Macedonia
Byzantium-Huns-(Rome)
Persia-Babylon (1500 years between the two!!)
Hittite-Egypt (??? ) <-- For this to happen there must be no civs inbetween
Phoenicia-Hebrew ^^ thus need to spawn later, around 1200 BC

5) I want to further advocate for Assyria as a competition to Babylon which would make the clusters the following:
Hittites-Assyria-Babylon-(Phoenicia)
Egypt-Israel-Phoenicia
Enough arguments in the other posts

6) I am still not happy about the situation around "Syria", there seem to be too many civs for too few place?

 

[Metal Alloy Man]

I like the second part of the UP, sort of. It could be dangerously abused. Before a unit gets created, all the player has to do is slide it up to 100%. Do you really want an army of chariots roaming about with 300+ XP?

Exactly my thoughts, though the cap would actually be at 30 (10 goes into 100 10 times, 3 experience for every 10%= tops 30 experience which is still way too much. 100% espionage throughout empire is much better but 50% might be more balanced?

 

[ZachScape]

That was an... erm... typo....
Seriously... WTH?!?? Must be that Gran Tarino I just watched....

 

[King Coltrane]

@zach + metal: hey im good with tuning... its good to start somewhere though.

I think there should be several distinct (for design purposes) "waves" of civ spawnings... first should start at or near the beginning and would allow for representation of the Bronze age, which basically saw the birth of civilizations everywhere... and a lot of them. While not all civs began in 3000 BCE (such as the hittites) these civs flourished until the collapse of around 1200 BCE. after this we would see the second wave of civs: the Iron age. Small kingdoms emerge, like Phoenecia, Israel, Assyria, Persia, etc. while the larger ones from the bronze age wane and/or collapse. These civs rise and create ever larger empires until stage 3: Alex and After. Alex's conquests see the downfall of all of the older empires to the south and east and lead to the successor states and the diadochi wars... which in turn lead to the rise (rebirth) of local empires, like (parthia and armenia) and finally stage 4: Rise of Rome. We all know what that entails, basically mop up as much of the map as you can, but it should also entail civil wars and fractious states... Finally, after all that is accomplished, we should enter stage 5: the Decline and Fall of Rome (GIBBON!) this stage should be about maintaining the empire as barbs, indys, and other threats pop up and try to break it up.... and finally do.

Therefore I think we should try and think in these terms when trying to decide the flow of history (that sounded so cool)

so to recap:

Stage 1: Bronze Age: 3000-1200 BCE
Stage 2: Iron Age: ~1200-330 BCE
Stage 3: Hellenistic Age: ~330~100 BCE
Stage 4: Rise of Rome: ~250 BCE-180 CE (yes there is overlap... thats fine)
Stage 5: Decline and Fall: 180-600 CE

 

[King Coltrane]

also, @mitsho: I agree there will be a lot of crowding in Syria, but thats how it really was... it was a contested periphery and lots of peoples wanted it and lots of people lived there too. I think we just need to think of a way to stagger which civs come in when.

 

[Jet]

The region is too crowded for Israel, and it wasn't enough of an empire.
I don't like nonplayable civs and don't see a reason to make them so.
I don't see the advantage of independents over the barbarian state.

I'd prefer India and two civs chosen from among Parthia, Nubia, and more Celtic and Germanic tribes.
* India fills its space, balancing Persia and giving Alexander a final target.
* Nubia fills its space and adds a fun outside factor.
* Parthia fills its space and balances the eastern civs, which are strong on the old map.
* More Celtic and Germanic tribes fill their large space, and in history there were many tribes.

 

[mitsho]

also, @mitsho: I agree there will be a lot of crowding in Syria, but thats how it really was... it was a contested periphery and lots of peoples wanted it and lots of people lived there too. I think we just need to think of a way to stagger which civs come in when.

I was actually referring more to the tiles of the map we have, not to the historical evolution ;-)

@Jet

... but Israel is popular! ;-) (same with Phoenicia btw.)
... Barbarians attack, Independents don't. You need two Indies to prevent huge independent empires.
... nonplayable civs add flavour and add units that should be confined two one area (see celts/natives)

... India is on the edge of the map, too few tiles, not much interaction (only persia), thus it can be represented by independent cities...
... Nubia is the same, only Egypt as interaction...
... for Parthia, a case can be made, imho it boils down to the question of how many civs you want in the region. I'd prefer Seleukia or Assyria over Parthia though.
... Celts and Germanics are represented by Celts, Germanic People, Barbarians and Independents. That gives enough of a mix as it seems.

I agree that one could replace Etruria either with them as a real civ or with a civ from the east, as there don't seem to be that many tiles in Italy. The West would then however be quite empty. (Athens needs to colonize a whole lot then btw...)

m