pre-release info First Look: Confucius - Discussion

[Black Gate]

I was thinking more Ming vases, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and Zheng He what-ifs, but the Qing is definitely the runners-up regardless. Now on the other hand, the 3K leaders would actually sell like hotcakes...

If Firaxis want to freely print money, especially in the Chinese market, we'll see Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang. Not sure how they'd synergise with the Han though...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Do you think they will make a video for Ben Franklin next? or Amina of Zazzau?

I was expecting Ashoka before this, so I'd still think he is more likely to follow than not. I really want to see a sneak peek at the Chola.

 

[RedCourtJester]

I mean, to no one's surprise, I could find you 8-9 candidates for Phoenician/Carthaginian leaders, though obviously they'd all be from Antiquity.

My top nine: Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido. Dido.

And now I feel a strong need to rewatch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Let's just scrap this whole three era thing and just do wuxia China.

 

[greenOak]

Yeah, this looks powerful, but I think the choke-point for him is going to end up being gold. It's not cheap to convert towns into cities, from what we know, and Confucius is going to want to get cities up early and often to get the most out of this, since the bonus (apparently) doesn't apply to towns. And as Eagle Pursuit mentions, population growth triggers border expansion, so Confucius is going to want those cities to have room to expand, too.

So you've got a game where you're settling towns as fast as you can, to turn them into cities as fast as you can, and you've got to give those settlements a good amount of space. Meanwhile, you've got neighbors as well, who also want that space, and you can't really afford to be buying units if you want to get those cities up, so you're probably hard-building a good amount of those (and you won't be getting much benefit from the Specialist bonus in the early game either, so you can't rely too much on technological advantage.)

So it's a very solid bonus, to be sure, but you're going to have to work for it.

That's why my first thought was to pair him with Aksum.

 

[Atlas627]

I don't want to complain too much about Confucius' appearance, but wasn't he from a Northern Chinese state, Shandong? His skin tone in the game looks more Southern Chinese or even Southeast Asian. Even darker than my skin-tone and I'm of Southern Chinese descent.

Firaxis hasn't always been accurate with skintones (see Tamar, and Hammurabi in Civ6), but I won't comment further on this.

I couldn't really hear him in the video, but is he speaking modern Mandarin? Which shouldn't have been around until...idk, Ming?

 

[RedCourtJester]

I couldn't really hear him in the video, but is he speaking modern Mandarin? Which shouldn't have been around until...idk, Ming?

Oh no, did we lose the more considered languages of VI too? If this is the case, I bet it was because leaders are now having conversations and it was too much for their historian sources to reconstruct.

 

[Evolena]

“Journal
Efficiency in Numbers
Have an Academy and Blacksmith on the same quarter.”

Is this a quest log maybe?

I've seen two sources of loggable quests for now:
* from the legacy paths
* from some events (we saw one in the Antiquity stream)

 

[Tanel]

I was expecting Ashoka before this, so I'd still think he is more likely to follow than not. I really want to see a sneak peek at the Chola.

Yea it looks like they are doing the ones associated with Antiquity civs first which probably means Ashoka and Chola next and then whatever we have left in the Antiquity age. Then we'll probably see Exploration gameplay reveal and they will continue with Amina/Songhai and the rest of the Exploration era civs with their associated leaders.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I couldn't really hear him in the video, but is he speaking modern Mandarin? Which shouldn't have been around until...idk, Ming?

Yes, he speaks modern Mandrin in the video.

Technically speaking, of course, Kongzi should speak Old Chinese.

The problem being, there are perhaps less than 100 or even 50 people who know what the Old Chinese sounded like in the entire world, and I am not sure a retired university professor in his late 70s is a good candidate for a voice actor.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I don't want to complain too much about Confucius' appearance, but wasn't he from a Northern Chinese state, Shandong? His skin tone in the game looks more Southern Chinese or even Southeast Asian. Even darker than my skin-tone and I'm of Southern Chinese descent.

Firaxis hasn't always been accurate with skintones (see Tamar, and Hammurabi in Civ6), but I won't comment further on this.

I assume this is because many of the Late Imperial (1368-1911) portraits of Kongzi tend to paint him with rather dark skin.
(And, of course, the skin color of the average Chinese is not necessarily region-coded; plenty of Northerners have dark skin, and plenty of Southerners have lighter skin as well. An IRL friend of mine, who is half-Manchu, half-Northern Han, has the darkest skin tone among the Chinese people I have ever known.)

The most famous, most commonly-reproduced Kongzi portrait, or the Kongzi yanju xiang (Ming dynasty), painted him with relatively dark skin. Compare the skin tone of Kongzi with the background color of the aged xuan paper.


Below is another well-known portrait of Kongzi and a portrait of his favorite student, Yan Hui, done by the same artist. This set of half-length portraits was initially hung in the Imperial Palace during Qing times, so the portrayal here is very much an officially agreed version.
Note the very obvious, if not dramatic, difference in skin tone between Kongzi (right) and Yan Hui (left).



I would say the FXS art team actually did a tremendously good job of faithfully modeling Kongzi based on the traditional art depictions. It is like Kongzi, who we only knew from the portraits before, now comes to life. His postures and movements are based on traditional salutes as well. (My only nickpick is that Kongzi should be taller, since he was a well-known tall and chunky person, almost like the Dwayne Johnson of his time.)

 

[Mudokon Pop]

China is one of those Civs that shows the dramatic imbalance in available Leaders.

We could have the old 8 - 9 Ages in the game and have a different Chinese Leader for each Age and still have names left over.

And do the same for England/Britain, France, Rome, Greece - but not even come close for Aksum or Carthage or other similar 'One Age' states.

Aksum has been depicted before in Civ games as Ethiopia - the Aksumite stelae have always been their UB. The term Ethiopia was used on coins issued by the 4th century ruler Ezana.

In Civ4 we've had Zara Yaqob (1434-1468) for the Exploration Era and for the Modern Era we've had rulers such as Civ 5's Haile Selassie (1930-1974) and Civ6 had Menelik II (1844-1913).

While it's unlikely we'll see rulers from all those periods in one game - I think it's very likely that we'll see Ethiopia represented in more than one age. It's not a one 'age state' like Carthage.

 

[Leyrann]

(And, of course, the skin color of the average Chinese is not necessarily region-coded; plenty of Northerners have dark skin, and plenty of Southerners have lighter skin as well. An IRL friend of mine, who is half-Manchu, half-Northern Han, has the darkest skin tone among the Chinese people I have ever known.)

I had it pointed out to me recently (and from what relatively-limited knowledge I have, it seems accurate) that hunter-gatherer societies tended to have darker skin colors than agricultural societies because their diets contained more vitamin D, meaning production of it (which requires light, and happens more quickly with lighter skin) was less important. I imagine that a society that more recently transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agricultural might have darker skin color than their southern neighbors who lived further south.

Major caveat: I don't know at what time various regions in the area transitioned from one to the other, the best I've got is that the steppes tended to remain nomadic for longer. And of course, the longer ago the transition happened, the less visible it is likely to be in the population.

 

[notNamed]

The problem being, there are perhaps less than 100 or even 50 people who know what the Old Chinese sounded like in the entire world, and I am not sure a retired university professor in his late 70s is a good candidate for a voice actor.

Old Chinese reconstructions do not have the material to propose a full sound system. Their research focuses on other things, but even the legends of the field don't say that we can really talk in Old Chinese.

At the same time, Middle Chinese, which holds the legacy of Latin/Sanskrit level importance for the East Asian world would most certainly have been doable and preferrable.
Civ 7 takes a very, very clear turn for less accuracy in favor of accessible readability. Wouldn't "Ancient Chinese dude" sounding like the "Ancient Chinese language" fill that role better than the same language as any old tourist one might come across? Though at the same time, there's always the native dimension like how AoE4 had quite a few people jump it saying the people in question aren't speaking Chinese and thus the game is at fault. Just like people in the West sometimes get pissy about reconstructed Latin or Greek not sounding like Ecclestial/Modern Greek.

Same thing with Han building design. The only building that actually looks Han period appropriate is the Weiyang Palace. All the other structures adopt designs from centuries later because those are easily recognisable Chinese buildings. As long as the roof tiles remain black, it's Han. Same thing with the unique ship graphic sporting a modern junk sail. Chinese ship = junk, even if Han period ships most definitely didn't use those.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Aksum has been depicted before in Civ games as Ethiopia - the Aksumite stelae have always been their UB. The term Ethiopia was used on coins issued by the 4th century ruler Ezana.

Not to be pedantic, but the Rock-Hewn Church was their unique improvement in Civ 6.
But you are right that some form of Aksum has always been depicted because their civ ability was Aksumite Legacy.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Civ 7 takes a very, very clear turn for less accuracy in favor of accessible readability. Wouldn't "Ancient Chinese dude" sounding like the "Ancient Chinese language" fill that role better than the same language as any old tourist one might come across? Though at the same time, there's always the native dimension like how AoE4 had quite a few people jump it saying the people in question aren't speaking Chinese and thus the game is at fault. Just like people in the West sometimes get pissy about reconstructed Latin or Greek not sounding like Ecclestial/Modern Greek.

Same thing with Han building design. The only building that actually looks Han period appropriate is the Weiyang Palace. All the other structures adopt designs from centuries later because those are easily recognisable Chinese buildings. As long as the roof tiles remain black, it's Han. Same thing with the unique ship graphic sporting a modern junk sail. Chinese ship = junk, even if Han period most didn't use those.

Augustus in the Civ 7 is speaking reconstructed Old Latin rather than Ecclesiastical Latin like all the Roman leaders in Civ 6, so credit where credit is due.


However, I also want to point out that the model of Ashoka in Civ 7 is roughly based on his depiction of the relief from the Sanchi Stupa (in which he is a half-naked man with very simple ornaments) rather than more common portrayals you can find on the internet (in which he dresses like a Delhi Sultanate nobleman). In fact, ARA's Ashoka is basically a stereotypical Indian raja, for that is much more recognizable to a largely western player base.

Then, In this particular case of Ashoka, Civ 7 pivots to more accuracy in favor of (probably?) less readability - and this is where having a historian as an advisor helped (credit to Dr. Andrew Johnson). I would say that when deeper but more accessible info is on hand, such as coming from a historian directly working with them, FXS will not shy away from embracing more accuracy.

The same might be said regarding Chinese-related designs. Kongzi has a very faithful model (to the point that I have seen people calling him "ugly" despite the model fits how Kongzi was usually portrayed), and it is indeed very easy to find the traditional portraits of Kongzi online. But for something like the Han Great Wall, you probably need someone from an academic background to help you - even for most Chinese, they don't really know what a Han Great Wall looked like - and this is where FXS used visuals of the Ming Great Wall instead. Similarly, we also do know what a Han-era ship looks like (there are contemporary ceramic models for ships), but that info is not very easy to find as well (one needs to be aware of the existence of the ceramic models, for instance).

I would still say having a historian helps with representation!

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The same might be said regarding Chinese-related designs. Kongzi has a very faithful model, and it is indeed very easy to find the traditional portraits of Kongzi online (my pictures above are from Wikimedia and the National Palace Museum in Taipei). But for something like the Han Great Wall, you probably need someone from an academic background to help you - even for most Chinese, they don't really know what a Han Great Wall looked like - and this is where FXS used the Ming Great Wall instead. Similarly, we also do know what a Han-era ship looks like (there are contemporary ceramic models for ships), but that info is not very easy to find as well. (Of course, we did not see Ming and Qing yet.)

I do wonder what kind of unique infrastructure the Ming will get now, considering Han got the Great Wall?
If it were up to me, I would have given the Great Wall to the Ming and Han could have gotten a Papermaking Workshop.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I do wonder what kind of unique infrastructure the Ming will get now, considering Han got the Great Wall?
If it were up to me, I would have given the Great Wall to the Ming and Han could have gotten a Papermaking Workshop.

I feel like Ming should get Shuyuan, but that might conflict with the Korean Seowon (they are essentially the same thing and even have the same name in Classical Chinese, 書院). If Ming gets Shuyuan, I don't know what Joseon will have, Jibseongchon?

It seems that FXS is focusing on the gunpowder part of Ming, then I guess Ming will get a Gunpowder Workshop and have a good Wanggongchang Explosion reference.

Personally, I would give Han the Regional Arsenal 武庫 instead. As quoted in my other post, these Arsenals held a staggering amount of weapons and were the backbone of the Han military power, a military that could fight back against the first All-Mongolian-Steppe-Horseriders'-Confederacy in human history.

 

[Navelgazer]

That's why my first thought was to pair him with Aksum.

Now this could be interesting and cool - a large empire of a bunch of high-population, mostly-coastal cities with extra resource slots and science and gold. This is a good idea right here.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I feel like Ming should get Shuyuan, but that might conflict with the Korean Seowon (they are essentially the same thing and even have the same name in Classical Chinese, 書院). If Ming gets Shuyuan, I don't know what Joseon will have, Jibseongchon?

I think there's a good chance that Joseon will be Modern Age, so maybe they won't see it as overlapping?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I had it pointed out to me recently (and from what relatively-limited knowledge I have, it seems accurate) that hunter-gatherer societies tended to have darker skin colors than agricultural societies because their diets contained more vitamin D, meaning production of it (which requires light, and happens more quickly with lighter skin) was less important. I imagine that a society that more recently transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agricultural might have darker skin color than their southern neighbors who lived further south.

Major caveat: I don't know at what time various regions in the area transitioned from one to the other, the best I've got is that the steppes tended to remain nomadic for longer. And of course, the longer ago the transition happened, the less visible it is likely to be in the population.

Environment may have more effect than diet.

For an example, in the Iliad and Odyssey, one of 'Homer's' stock phrases is "The blond Hellenes (Achaeans)", which indicates that in the period the poems were being set down, roughly 800 - 500 BCE, the peoples of mainland Greece had a high percentage of blond hair and the generally lighter skin that goes with it.

Flash forward, 500 years or so, and nobody in Roman times is referring to the Greeks as blond anything.

The difference is that in 800 BCE, the last migration of Greek speakers had just reached Greece from the north in the previous 6 - 700 years, and being from the north (steppes and Balkans) the climate encouraged more D-absorbing light skin: the same climactic variations that encourage blond hair and generally lighter skin tones among northern Europeans to this day.

700 - 1000 years in a Mediterranean climate with massively greater sun exposure required changes in both skin color - darkening to protect against sun-enduced skin cancers - and hair color: blond in a tropical or Mediterranean near-tropical sun gives a much greater chance of heat injury. The German Wehrmacht conquered Greece by May 1941, so didn't notice this until they stationed garrison troops in the country during the summers of 1941 to 1944, and had a spike in heat injuries every summer.

In other words, the change in environment in a relatively short time (measured in generations) resulted in a very noticeable change in the skin and hair color of the population to adapt to the new conditions. Diet certainly may contribute, but we have a definite example of mostly climactic conditions apparently having the same effect.