Do you like Kyzyl being one of the city-states?

[LifeOfBrian]

I was thinking about the city states that are in the game and I thought that for Kyzyl, it made little sense as to why it would be included as a city state, since to my untrained eye it seems it has never held any particular importance in history. You can read more about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyzyl . It was founded only in 1914, so it's not a particularly old city, it has around 100.000 inhabitants, so it's not a particularly big city, and from the description I can't really fathom why it would be notable in "Civ" terms.

Some cities that I'd prefer be included instead of the likes of Kyzyl (if we were to change it) are:
- Hattusha (capital of the ancient Hattite empire and part of the UNESCO World Heritage list),
- Meroe (in one period capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush, also part of UNESCO World heritage list),
- Lima (capital of Peru, one of the most important post-Colombian cities in South America),
- Montevideo (capital of Uruguay, comparable in many ways to Buenos Aires, which is already a city-state),
- Havana (capital of Cuba, part of the city is on the UNESCO list),
- Samarra (was the capital of Abbasid Caliphate, on the UNESCO list, not a part of Arabia's city list, iirc),
- Bagan/Pagan (capital of the Pagan Kingdom for over 4 centuries in modern-day Myanmar, UNESCO site with over 2000 surviving Pagodas, Temples etc.).

Thanks for your replies and votes in the poll.

 

[pineappledan]

I'm holding out for someone to add Hittites and Burma to VP, and Nubia is already in with Meroe for their capital.

My vote would go to Havana or Port au Prince.

(other/abstain, btw. This is such a hilariously low-level concern. At least you know about Kyzyl now, right?)

 

[Stalker0]

I am so neutral on this you wouldn't believe it.

 

[Bryan317]

I am so neutral on this you wouldn't believe it.

...and therefore I abstain. I chose "other." But I'd say if we're getting down to discussions like this, this mod is nearing completion lol

I just have a hard time saying yes or no. He seems pretty adamant about it, and his argument kind of makes sense.

 

[Enginseer]

Change for the sake of change is unnecessary. Kyzyl has its own theme. Kyzyl is notable at least to the civ developers based on their entries.

... Kyzyl was largely isolated from the world. This 50-year enforced isolation helped preserve the Turkic-Mongolian culture found nowhere else that characterized the town. Khuresh, a Tuvan form of wrestling, is extremely popular, and an annual competition is held in Kyzyl. Turkic music, notably Tuvan throat singing, is celebrated each year at the Naadym festival...

Renaming Kyzyl to any other city-state serves as an unnecessary bad habit due to an "insignificance."

 

[Ragic]

The name should be kept in for all the games of scrabble it has won for people.

 

[Gizmoman]

I hate the naming of a ton of city-states, mostly the ones that were never actually city-states and were even part of existing civs.
That said, I've pretty much reached the level of hate that I don't care about it anymore.

 

[bahamut19]

Overall this idea is insignificant, however I like the opportunity to say Kyzyl. Sometimes, we purposefully mispronounce it to Kuh-zy-zil and use it as an exclamation. Say that word as if you sneezed. It's fun.

Sometimes it's good to leave things as they are. The game provides a real opportunity to learn about history and places you may never hear about elsewhere. No need to change because someone has enough self-importance to say a place or person is insignificant.

 

[Bryan317]

The hilarious thing is at the time of my post this vote is deadlocked at 10 yes 10 no 3 other

 

[looorg]

I don't care, it's not really an issue I would spend a lot of time and effort on. In that regard I'm more upset about that they never bothered to fix the spelling errors in certain city-names. Västeräs (Sweden) comes to mind ... Still in there after all these years.

 

[pineappledan]

Just wanna say that Huun-Huur-Tu is my jam. @Enginseer makes a valid point that this insistence that kyzyl doesn't "deserve" to be in the game does have a rather strange undertone, because they are representative of a rather unique culture, and representation of central Asian cultures is generally in short supply. It's not a situation like Byblos and Sidon, where they are both from the same culture and time period, and only about 80km away from each other

 

[Gazebo]

How does a man turn neutral? It sickens me.

 

[Bryan317]

How does a man turn neutral? It sickens me.

This thread has taught me that my indecision and indifference will be my downfall. I thank LifeofBrian for showing me the way. I will now always try to look on the bright side of life

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Pineappledan, Enginseer, I'm not sure we're on the same page as to what Kyzyl is. I was basing my opinion on the Wikipedia entry that says "The settlement was founded in 1914 by Russian settlers". I'm not sure how that is consistent with Pineappledan's descrpition of "they are representative of a rather unique culture" or where the developers found that information that Enginseer quoted?

Also, I would say the same for any small-town founded fairly recently and is as small in population as around 100.000, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Springs,_Georgia , if Sandy Springs was a city state in Civilization. So it's not a question of me being dismissive of any cultures, Western or not.

 

[Gizmoman]

How does a man turn neutral? It sickens me.

A lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

 

[InkAxis]

I'm more or less indifferent so I wasn't gonna comment but it seems this has become the hot button issue lol, and also I realized we probably shouldn't just because of the precedent.
I think we aren't really going to go through and "fix" every thing the civ 5 designers got wrong wrt history, like there are much more obvious errors like Haudenosaunee/Iroquois, or changing the leader of "Polynesia". Trying to fix these issues and deciding which cultures are significant is the thin edge of a wedge we shouldn't get into.

 

[LarryAR]

I was basing my opinion on the Wikipedia entry

I use wikipedia a lot, but know that Wikipedia doesn't accept itself as a reliable source. All emphasis shown is from Wikipedia:

retrieved 2021June13 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source
"Wikipedia is not a reliable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because it can be edited by anyone at any time, any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong."

and neither should we.
Again, the boldface and underline is Wikipedia's emphasis not mine:

retrieved 2021June13 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
"Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki. Anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize. Thus, you probably shouldn't be citing Wikipedia."

Just sayin' (Even though I did cite Wikipedia.)

 

[ChefBRD]

iirc, one of the Chinese cities is "Shandong", a province larger than like all of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark combined, home to two huge metropolitan cities, plus another couple ancient capitals of the classical period.

There are definitely roads we needn't go down.

 

[Amask]

I don't care, it's not really an issue I would spend a lot of time and effort on. In that regard I'm more upset about that they never bothered to fix the spelling errors in certain city-names. Västeräs (Sweden) comes to mind ... Still in there after all these years.

Spoiler :

 

[Grassland Farm]

Spoiler :

Wow I'm relieved they actually had given him a fitting trait at some point. I launched the vanilla game out of curiosity once and I tore my hair out when I saw Gustavus' UA was about Nobel Prizes.