Georgia, one of the worst civ choices!?

[AbsintheRed]

A couple quotes from the other thread, this deserves a separate conversation:

Am I the only one who thinks Georgia is an awful choice?
Even at the current point, there are 50+ civs which should have definitely come before it.
Also, from the region, Armenia would have been way better. Now it has 0 chance basically.
I curse the day when the stupid Georgia/Tamar meme was born... resulted in another strangeness in the civ roster in the end

Huh, so it is. I was under the impression that Georgian Orthodoxy was Oriental Orthodox like the Armenian Apostolic and Syriac Orthodox churches. Okay, now I am a little disappointed we didn't get Armenia.

It's always bad when a civ appears on the roster for the wrong reasons, pushing back way too many better candidates, and eventually resulting in some of those great civs being left out.
But it's even worse in this case (and that's the primary point of the thread): The inclusion of Georgia most likely means that Armenia is out for good.

Comparing the 2, Armenia is definitely a better choice, in every possible way.
Much longer and very interesting history, a huge ancient empire, a great number of awesome rulers, (one of the) earliest bastion(s) of Christianity, later separate unique Oriental Orthodox church, armenians being one of the powerbases of the Byzantine Empire, etc.
Armenia is one of the top few civs which should have been added to a Civ game by this point, along with Hungary and Phoenicia... I was really hoping it will happen to these civs this time.

And what annoys me the most, is that all this happens because of 2 of the worst reasons:
- A silly meme, which was never funny. The origin of which was a mistake, Georgia didn't even fit alphabetically in the civ bingo in the first place.
- Firaxis' annoying habit of gender equality in historic leaders, as in adding a huge boost to a leader's chances if it had boobs. (and as a side effect: now including a worse option only because it has a popular female leader, albeit the leader is a good choice this time for the civ itself)

I mean, how many of the leaders were female during the course of history? 1%? Maybe 2? Then why are they trying this hard to have 30-40% in the leader roster??
Sure, get in the best female leaders they can find, but only if they were really among the best rulers for the given country. Looking at you, Egypt, France, Greece/Sparta, and now the Netherlands...


EDIT:
Just to make my point clear, I have nothing against female leaders. I prefer them actually.
But only if they are great choices for their nation, if they have been significant enough historically.
I wouldn't bat an eye if there were only female leaders in the game, if all of them were great choices.

The problem is with Firaxis' tendency of choosing questionable female leaders over way more significant historic icons.
And the biggest reason in all those cases is gender. I would go as far as to say that in some cases it is the only reason...
There are plenty of examples for this in both Civ V (Theodora, Maria, Wu to a lesser extent) and Civ VI (Cleopatra, Cathrine de Medici, Gorgo, Jadwiga to a lesser extent, maybe Seondeok and Wilhelmina too).
And for VI they took the next step with Tomyris and Tamar: while they are good choices for the civs themselves, I feel that one of the primary reasons for choosing an otherwise questionable civ is because they had a good female leader.
And it really needs to stop now.

I understand the need for diversity in the game, but they do not have to push it this hard.
Right now we have 33 known leaders, from which 11 is female.
That's 33%. Even with taking the selectiveness of choices into account, it's just way too much. History just didn't work that way.
Once again, I don't care about the numbers themselves. But this means, that it would have been perfectly fine if we only had the best female leaders from those 11 at this point.
Would have resulted in a better leader and civ roster.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

high quality rant right here

 

[SammyKhalifa]

it wouldn't have been my first choice, but as long as they're fun to play that's what matters. and it seems to have made people happy for a bit, so cool.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Maybe civfanatics will now respect the power of memes.

A power not to be used lightly.

 

[Guandao]

Well, Armenia getting into R&F over say the Ottomans would piss off many people on the internet. I'm no expert on Armenia, but their leaders don't seem as interesting as Tamar.

My personal opinion, I find the Georgian language more interesting than Armenian, since it's non-Indo European.

 

[Cedbird77]

it wouldn't have been my first choice, but as long as they're fun to play that's what matters. and it seems to have made people happy for a bit, so cool.

I agree. I think I am over saying why are they on Civ. I think the point of the game is having the opportunity to play from many different Civilizations that you might of never heard of large and small. And creating an empire from the culture and characteristics of that Civ.

Some Civs are Controversial. I would love to see Israel. Don 't think I will ever see them. It 's not my game so it doesnt matter.

 

[Gedemo]

Twenty years later we are still stuck with Gandhi and his nukes ..... so funny

A civ from caucasus is new, why not. But I just hope that some other interesting original geographical zone will be covered: arctic, pacific, amazonian forest. My fear is that devs financial credist are limited and that my hope having a inuit civ and a Tu'i tonga empire is dead.
For civ 7, I hope that the dozen of civfanatics that litterally make this meme just choose something more interesting.

 

[Phrozen]

Better choice than the Huns from Civ V.

 

[Nurse Michael]

Can always include a mod for Armenian civ, im sure someone will make it.
I dont mind a few new civs like Georgia or the Scythians as long as the most influential ones in history are still there.

Also, Im Dutch and im happy with Wilhelmina as a modern variant for representing my country.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Better choice than the Huns from Civ V.

Yep, that's true, that wasn't a perfect choice either. Altough that's mostly because of the lack of knowledge about them. Almost the same can be said of Scythia btw.

Actually there always were some bad choices, for almost all Civ titles:
For IV "Native Americans", as in a single civ, or the HRE. IMO these 2 were the most awful choices, ever, from all titles.
For V the Huns, Venice, Brazil or Austria.
For VI Scythia, Australia, Macedon.

While bad decisions happen for all games, that doesn't really help when a new one comes up.

 

[Kwami]

I think that Georgia is a great choice. The country has an interesting history, the Georgian empire was quite large and influential, and Tamar was a great leader. What's not to like?

Is this just some nationalist nonsense or something?

 

[Onii-chan]

Hey at least it's a hell of a lot better meme than Gandhi's nuke habits at least, that one really needs to die already

In any case I don't really care too much either way. I'm more interested in trying new civs with new and interesting bonuses that fit them thematically than that they have to pick the historically "biggest" remaining civ all the time. Like when Macedon was introduced I agreed that the pseudo-triple Greece was dumb but man it was a brilliantly designed civ in terms of fun and thematically appropriate abilities so I loved it anyway

 

[Karpius]

- Firaxis' annoying habit of gender equality in historic leaders, as in adding a huge boost to a leader's chances if it had boobs.

After the Golden Globes the other night, you really expect them to choose male leaders?

Just a matter of time before they replace Teddy with Oprah!

 

[Kwami]

If Georgia was lead by David the Builder instead, would you still be ranting so much about it? I don't think he had boobs...

 

[Lord Lakely]

People would be ranting about it MORE if Davit the Builder led Georgia. Tamargate brought the historical figure of Tamar into the limelight; which was the main draw to include her in the first place. Having anyone else lead Georgia during the Civ Début would make no sense. The inclusion of Georgia boils entirely down to Tamar.

She's the Shaka of the Caucasus. (which, mind, is a way worse choice for a Civ than Georgia yet is kept in the game out of nostalgia)

 

[Leyrann]

Ugh, I'm gonna make exactly one post in this thread and then I'm out and not visiting it again.

Variety. We've had five editions of Civilization beforehand, and yes, there are a number of civs, like England, Egypt, Spain, China etc that really deserve to be in every single edition because they were just so damn important in their time frame. But, there are maybe 20, 25 such civilizations that really must be in the game. That means that any civ beyond that - and we can expect a total of 40-50 civs - is not a must have for the game. Yes, there are many important civs in there - the Netherlands, Austria, Mali, Aztec, etc - but it would be super boring if we'd have the exact same civs every game. So instead, those important-but-not-must-have civs are occasionally swapped out in favour of less important civs that only appear once. Think Civ IV's Holy Roman Empire or Civ V's Songhai or Shoshone. Or Civ VI's Australia, Cree and now Georgia. They were never before in, they're in this time, and they very well might not be in the next three or four editions of Civilization. Think of it as a gliding line. We've got the 150 most important civs in human history ordered by importance. The most important 15-20 of those get to be in every edition. After that, you draw a line that goes from 1 to 0 on a scale, and that's the percentage of games in which the civ appears. The last ten civs in that list of 150 might appear only once per ten Civilization games, while the ones taking, say, spot 40, will be in seven or eight of ten games. This time, it's Georgia's turn as a somewhat smaller civ to appear. Just like it's previously been Venice's or the Iroquois' turn.

 

[Merciorum]

Much longer

Nope.

and very interesting history

Same as Georgia.

a huge ancient empire,

Georgia had a medieval empire of comparable size, which I would count as doubly impressive given they forged it in the face of the Seljuks. Which isn't to say that the Kingdom of Armenia wasn't impressive, foc,

a great number of awesome rulers,

Same as Georgia.

(one of the) earliest bastion(s) of Christianity

Same as Georgia. I mean, yeah, Armenia was earlier, but that hardly discounts the importance or interest of Georgian Christianity.

later separate unique Oriental Orthodox church

Miaphysitism isn't unique to Armenia. You are right, though, it is a very distinctive religious identity in the region. Still don't get why this makes them somehow "worthier" than Georgia.

armenians being one of the powerbases of the Byzantine Empire, etc.

Georgia being one of the powerbases of the Safavid Empire. Georgia being able to assert independence from the Byzantine Empire (and everyone else) for centuries.

You can make similar lists for both countries, and I'm sure if Armenia had been added then someone would have said the same thing about Georgia. Nothing you've said somehow invalidates Georgian history.

Armenia is one of the top few civs which should have been added to a Civ game by this point, along with Hungary and Phoenicia... I was really hoping it will happen to these civs this time.

OK first of all, Hungary? Really? Europe is already wildly overrepresented compared to the rest of the world; I mean, there's just about parity with Asia now but Africa and the Americas should be the priorities for new civs.

Anyway- while I'd love to see Armenia, I don't think the devs have ever had some chart of "important" and "unimportant" civs and decided based on some arbitrary ranking of relevance. I mean, I could equally say that the Taungu, Oman and the Uzbeks are the most important. They were all large empires with a huge commercial/political/&c bearing on world history.

And what annoys me the most, is that all this happens because of 2 of the worst reasons:
- A silly meme, which was never funny. The origin of which was a mistake, Georgia didn't even fit alphabetically in the civ bingo in the first place.
- Firaxis' annoying habit of gender equality in historic leaders, as in adding a huge boost to a leader's chances if it had boobs. (and as a side effect: now including a worse option only because it has a popular female leader, albeit the leader is a good choice this time for the civ itself)

I mean, how many of the leaders were female during the course of history? 1%? Maybe 2? Then why do they want to have 30-40 in the leader roster??
Sure, get in the best female leaders they can find, but only if they were really among the best rulers for the given country. Looking at you, Egypt, France, Greece/Sparta, and now the Netherlands...

1) You're assuming a lot there. I have no doubt they got the idea based on the meme, but Tamar is a fine ruler so I don't really think it matters.
2) Yeah, you're right, most reigning rulers weren't female. Who cares? You're never going to find some objective ranking of "best" leaders. Having female rulers is a good way to shine a light on alternative methods of power. And anyway, they're not trying to create some objective list of important civilisations and rulers who emblematise some perfect representation of the entire history of those civilisations, because such a thing is a mug's game that can't be done. I'd much rather they just chose civs and leaders they just happened to find interesting, as long as they don't wildly skew the roster towards the West. Of course they're going to add more women- they're a video games company looking to expand their market, so they're going to want more female representation. I really do not get why you people care about this so much.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

She's the Shaka of the Caucasus

Haha! It sounds like she is being announced for a boxing match.

 

[nunor]

This is a Civ game that, despite having a multiple leaders feature, has Greece and Macedon as separate civs. In comparison, the inclusion of Tamar's Georgia is pretty tame (no pun intended).

 

[AbsintheRed]

Is this just some nationalist nonsense or something?

All my nationalistic nonsenses are reserved for Hungary
I have no relations whatsoever neither to georgians nor to armenians.

If Georgia was lead by David the Builder instead, would you still be ranting so much about it? I don't think he had boobs...

Of course. My rant is against the civ, not the leader.
It's only a side effect that Georgia having a female leader was most likely a very important factor in choosing the civ.
They take gender way too seriously in their leader decisions. It should be a n+1th reason, with minor weight, not one of the most important ones.