Evolving Civs and Leaders - Aztec to Mexico, Cherokee to America

[Quintillus]

This was actually one of my least favourite aspects of Civ3, actually. I found it quite jarring and goofy, visually.

It could be a bit goofy at times, but so can the later versions of Civ in their leader animations. I love Kupe in Civ VI pantomiming that he's going to slit your throat, but it's certainly goofy. Same with Catherine the Great when she's upset with you in Civ IV.

In the end I think leader animations are a matter of personal taste.

I like this idea as long as it's not set in stone that this leader can only lead for two eras, and not before this era etc.
Regarding France who would be there leader at the beginning of the game if Jeanne d"Arc was only available starting at Medieval. Surely, we wouldn't have a leader from Gaul?
To me there's not a problem with this idea if we could start the game off with someone like Napoleon and then decide to switch to her through something like a government change.

Clovis? Charles "The Hammer" Martel? Charlemagne? (the latter possibly as a dual-leader a la Eleanor of Aquitaine in Civ VI, also leading Germany) I don't think you can really go earlier than the Merovingians and have it represent France, or you'd be crossing into the "clump everyone who's lived in the same geographic region into one Civ" representation with the problems that can cause in areas where many different peoples have lived over time.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Clovis? Charles "The Hammer" Martel? Charlemagne? (the latter possibly as a dual-leader a la Eleanor of Aquitaine in Civ VI, also leading Germany) I don't think you can really go earlier than the Merovingians and have it represent France, or you'd be crossing into the "clump everyone who's lived in the same geographic region into one Civ" representation with the problems that can cause in areas where many different peoples have lived over time.

Considering they would also be from the Medieval Era as well, I really wasn't even thinking about them, but sure.
Then again, I wouldn't mind Charlemagne and the Franks be a separate civ from France and Germany, instead of making him a dual leader for both.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Personally I see leaders as player avatars, not proper leaders. I mean both human and AI players lead a civ for 6k years and control aspects of their civs that in no way a real goverment can do.
What I mean is that CIV is a computarized boardgame, so the other leaders are like if you sit to play a board game with historical figures like Gandhi, Saladin and Victoria.
There is not need to make sense about civs transforming into others, people want to play as "what if..." Gauls never fell to Rome and we have Industrial Gallia. We already sit to play with Washington and Gilgamesh as part of "what if..." Determine civs to change into others is kind of absurd, like why if Gauls start with China, Zulu and Inca around them and they are doing pretty well in Classical Era why would they turn into Franks from nowhere for no reason?
Gauls turning into France only make sense after lost to Rome and Franks, in your match as Gauls if that not happens there is not reason to change, you are supposed to have success where real Gauls failed not to repeat their defeats.

 

[pokiehl]

And with only 4 eras (versus 9 in Civ6 + GS), it was manageable in terms of art overhead.

The quality of character art between now and then is like night and day. With current standards it’d be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. It’s a silly idea anyway, one I’m happy to see never return.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Personally I see leaders as player avatars, not proper leaders. I mean both human and AI players lead a civ for 6k years and control aspects of their civs that in no way a real goverment can do.
What I mean is that CIV is a computarized boardgame, so the other leaders are like if you sit to play a board game with historical figures like Gandhi, Saladin and Victoria.
There is not need to make sense about civs transforming into others, people want to play as "what if..." Gauls never fell to Rome and we have Industrial Gallia. We already sit to play with Washington and Gilgamesh as part of "what if..." Determine civs to change into others is kind of absurd, like why if Gauls start with China, Zulu and Inca around them and they are doing pretty well in Classical Era why would they turn into Franks from nowhere for no reason?
Gauls turning into France only make sense after lost to Rome and Franks, in your match as Gauls if that not happens there is not reason to change, you are supposed to have success where real Gauls failed not to repeat their defeats.

I don't think anyone here other, than the OP, wants to change civs during the course of the game.
I however wouldn't mind the idea of changing leaders throughout the game, as an optional mode.

 

[PetrusvonDoom]

I think this concept of evolution that you describe is a little prejudiced. It sounds as if native civilizations were stagnant and would never change technologically or culturally if the Europeans hadn't conquered them. I think of Civilization as a big "What if...", the history of the Aztecs doesn't always have to end with Mexico (which, by the way, Mexico is as Aztec as it is Spanish. There is no Mexico without a very specific historical context of conquest and colonization and if the "whole is more than the sum of its parts", there is no way to reduce Mexico to just one of its cultural foundations).

 

[Cooleatack]

Well, this thread developed into an Aztecs -> Mexico/Cherokee -> American/taco shop focus pretty quickly.

But I think that in part goes to show how tough this would be to do on a geographic basis, and how many groups would object to such decisions. Imagine if the Byzantine Greeks became the Turks, who then became the modern Greeks. Both Greeks and Turks would be up in arms, even though from a geographic standpoint, one could make an argument that it follows the timeline accurately.

It might work for Rome -> Italy, but overall, I think (1) would be hazardous on geographic grounds in much of the world.

Humankind tried (1) but without geographic constraints on the evolution. IMO, the result was perhaps even worse from a gameplay standpoint. At least if you have Aztecs -> Mexico, you know which civ is which geographically. In Humankind, you can go from England to Japan to Mali, and so can your neighbors, and it rapidly becomes impossible to remember who's who. Having a stable identity is, IMO, important in a 4X game.

I think (2) and (3) are much more interesting and practical ideas.

It wouldn't necessarily work timeline-wise for everyone, since not every civ has been around for all of human history. But you could fudge it with the nearest available option; the USA has George Washington from 4000 BC until the Industrial Era, when they get someone more modern like Chester Alan Arthur. France has their Civ3 Joan of Arc in the Middle Ages and Napoleon in the Industrial Age and De Gaulle in the Modern Age.

The downside is it's more art work and does it really make the game better?

Or you just do (2) as written with changing uniforms, and that's exactly what Civ III did. Aside from some debatable choices about Joan's modern military uniform, it worked pretty well overall. Yeah, it required a bit of imagination to have Mursilis of the Hittites in a modern office building, but it added some nice flavor and immediate visual feedback on the diplomacy screen as to which era your opponent was in. And with only 4 eras (versus 9 in Civ6 + GS), it was manageable in terms of art overhead.

Even Rome>Italy is just Nationalistic bs held over from the times of Mussolini. Rome and the Aztecs are alike in that they were conquered by outside powers who then intermingled with the locals to form a completely separate identity. Making it a continuation as you and luckily most here say would be highly disrespectful to the actual cultures.

Heck the Aztecs themselves were brutal conquerors that popularly overshadow the rest of the region that could provide different civs like the Purépecha, Zapotecs, or one of their many subjects.

Civilizations are so often confused with nation states that cultures are not even warranted to be civs because they have no nation state. It also leads to these types of discussions where someone thinks its a-okay to make the teleological mistake of linearly “progressing” the Aztecs to the Mexicans. I do not think the Aztecs see what happened as progress (and to reiterate the point from before, neither would the peoples they conquered)!

This is a problem Firaxis caused themselves from the get go. They would do wise to move the game in a direction that does not glorify nationalism, genocide and conquest, but gives players more troublesome consequences when doing this and shows cultural splits and destruction more realistically.

I don’t think OP meant to be so irresponsibility bigoted. It is a result of the way Firaxis has taught History through their games (and a faulted and biased education system when it comes to history foremost, obviously).

 

[Evie]

Rome > Italy has been a thing for the Italians since at least as far back as the Renaissance Italian writers (who, yes, had a concept of Italy as a single entity and wrote about it), predating Mussolini by at least five hundred years. Reducing the concept to his use of it is blatant recent-ism.

Doesn't mean it should be in the game, but that doesn't mean we should make misleading claims against it either.