German Names In Civ3

[timerover51]

If you are going to turn this into a critique of Firaxis choice of leaders, at least have the decency to ask a moderator to move it to a new thread and quit hijacking Darski's discussion.

 

[Lanzelot]

Hi Padma,
are you able to move all posts relating to leader names and city lists etc. into a new thread? They are indeed misplaced in Darski's thread, but it's an interesting discussion worth continuing!

 

[Padma]

I'll split them off when I get back on a real computer. (I'm not even going to try on my phone with Tapatalk. )


Moderator Action: Edit: Threads split.

 

[Kirejara]

The german city list was the original reason, why I started to use the editor.

Currently my list is this:

Berlin
Leipzig
Hamburg
Königsberg
Frankfurt
München
Braunschweig
Heidelberg
Nürnberg
Köln
Aachen
Hannover
Bremen
Bremerhaven
Stuttgart
Ulm
Bonn
Karlsruhe
Dortmund
Chemnitz
Dresden
Magdeburg
Stuttgart
Worms
Speyer
Kiel
Flensburg
Schleswig
Rendsburg
Lübeck
Mölln
Oldenburg
Burg
Münster
Neumünster
Bochum
Schweinfurt
Regensburg
Ingolstadt
Erfurt
Passau
Augsburg
Wilhelmshaven
Lüneburg
Verden
Minden
Goslar
Paderborn
Fulda
Mainz
Koblenz
Rothenburg
Regensburg
Jüterbog
Elberfeld
Kattowitz

After that it continues with Wien (Vienna for english speakers) as the austrian city list follows. The same happens in the austrian city list with the german list following.

This is not so far from real history. Even my home city Kiel was for a about one year following the Austro-Prussian-Danish-War part of Austria.

My military leader list is somewhat short. My first change was the deletion of dubious WWII-Generals (including Tojo in the japanese list).

Friedrich Barbarossa
Siegfried
Scharnhorst
Gneisenau
Hipper
Scheer
Graf Spee
Moltke
Roland
Blücher

 

[Desertsnow]

Ulm

Einstein's birthplace. Civilization 3 has him as a scientific leader but it doesn't have the city where he was born.

 

[Lanzelot]

For some reason, Firaxis seems to censor / diminish the Germans more than it does other civilizations. That comes across clearly in its Civ 3 Germany leaders list. I can understand not including Hitler as a leader (although as I pointed out, they do include Tojo and Stalin), but I wouldn't see any problem with including someone like Ludendorff on the list even though he had what we consider to be unsavory opinions. Surely Ludendorff is no more morally repugnant than many of the other leaders featured in the game. I don't understand why the German leaders list would be limited in the way it was other than some desire not to offend (as though including Frederick the Great or Hermann or von Moltke the Elder would somehow be offensive in a way that including Tojo or Stalin would not).

The Civ games also tend to focus solely on Wilhelmine Germany while ignoring the rest of German civilization's 2000+ year history.

...

I understand that for political reasons it is somewhat difficult today to balance a full and accurate presentation of the extent of German history and civilization in a game while avoiding catering to some revanchist extremists, but in my opinion Firaxis has censored Germany too much (and to a greater extent than other civilizations).

Another thing about the German cities is that the list is too short. The game has a bazillion American cities but only 16 German cities.

I don't think it is necessarily "censorship". A more likely reason is perhaps just "lack of knowledge"... Consider that the game was written by American developers. Add to this that a"tight release schedule" may have added some pressure, and it may explain why they went with some basic knowledge they still remembered from their school days. I think that many other nations' lists of city names and leader names suffer from similar shortcomings. For example take a look at the (even shorter) list of French military leaders:

Napoleon
Richelieu
De Gaulle
Charlemagne

Richelieu was not a military leader, he was a Catholic Cardinal and First Minister of the French government, but was never involved in any military actions. It just happens that under his reign France participated in the Thirty Years War, but that doesn't make him a military expert, does it?!

And Charlemagne was not French... He ruled over an empire that saw itself as the successor of the Roman Empire and consisted roughly of those parts of Western/Central Europe that today comprise the countries France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Austria and Germany. His capital was Aachen, a purely German city. (Because of this fact, the Germans claim that he was German... which is of course equally wrong... )

So out of a meager list of 4, we have only 2 that were indeed French military leaders!! Quite pathetic of Firaxis, if you consider that this nation has produced quite a number of great military leaders in its long history. Napoleon's Marechals alone would fill a complete list...

And here is another interesting twist: Boudicca appears as a military great leader for two different nations: once for the Celts and once for England (under the spelling of Boudicea)...

 

[Lanzelot]

Currently my list is this:

I like that list. It has an interesting mix of old cities that were important 1000 years ago and those that are important today.

For example, Worms, Speyer and Goslar are insignificant provincial towns today, but 1000 years ago they were centers of the cultural and political life of Germany. And München or Berlin were just "peasant villages" in the middle ages, but are Germany's metropolises today...

Einstein's birthplace. Civilization 3 has him as a scientific leader but it doesn't have the city where he was born.

But strangely enough, he is listed as a scientific leader for America, not for Germany?! As far as I know, all his major contributions to Physics were done before his emigration to the United States: the Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905, while he had the Swiss citizenship. And he had the German citizenship when he worked at the University of Berlin on such "breakthrough" topics like the General Theory of Relativity (1916), Photon Theory of Light or Quantum Mechanics of Radiation. He got the Nobel Prize in 1921. As far as I know, he didn't publish any major scientific discovery after 1926. He emigrated to the States in 1933, where he got the US citizenship as late as 1940. So it's a bit strange to list him as an American scientist...?!

 

[Roundman]

I don't think it is necessarily "censorship". A more likely reason is perhaps just "lack of knowledge"... Consider that the game was written by American developers. Add to this that a"tight release schedule" may have added some pressure, and it may explain why they went with some basic knowledge they still remembered from their school days. I think that many other nations' lists of city names and leader names suffer from similar shortcomings.

I didn't realize the problems with the French. Still, the Germans seem to have been especially shortchanged. Look at the Dutch name list, not to mention some of the lists for civilizations like the Maya. Maybe the fact that they were released as expansions had something to do with it- perhaps Firaxis was still in the Civilization 2 mindset with the release of Civ 3 Vanilla. The German list cities list and leaders list are sloppy, short, and odd.

 

[Roundman]

I like that list. It has an interesting mix of old cities that were important 1000 years ago and those that are important today.

For example, Worms, Speyer and Goslar are insignificant provincial towns today, but 1000 years ago they were centers of the cultural and political life of Germany. And München or Berlin were just "peasant villages" in the middle ages, but are Germany's metropolises today...

Nice list, though a little North heavy. I'd move some of the historically important southern cities like Augsburg a bit higher on the list and add places like Würzburg. If you want more of a northern focus, I'd add Schwerin, Rostock, Stralsund, and Wismar. I also like mixing in Austrian cities and including some of the significant historical German cities of the East (Königsberg, Breslau, Danzig, Stettin, Memel, etc.).

Another town I usually add if my empire gets huge is Soest- it was a Hanseatic city and a major power in Westphalia in the middle ages prior to winning a Phyrric war of independence against Köln (the Soester Fehde). I spent a day in Soest and found it quite charming. That's one of the fascinating things about Germany- its history of being divided into dozens of small fiefdoms and bishoprics, etc. led to the rise of dozens and dozens of interesting and historically important cities. Every little Count and Duke and Margrave and Burgrave was competing to make his territory the richest and most impressive.

I save Kiel for times I find a one tile peninsula I can settle. That way, I have a Kiel canal.

What do you Germans think about having Leipzig as the second German city? It doesn't seem to be a significant enough city to have as number 2 overall. Taking history into account, I'd put Dresden over Leipzig. What am I missing?

 

[Desertsnow]

The list has Königsberg, though as said previously the name is incorrectly spelled Konigsberg.

@Lanzelot: It wouldn't have taken a lot to look up a little bit of geography or history.