Historical Concepts Translated to Gameplay and Mechanics

Byzantium seems very Crusade like which fits the idea of them being involved in the Crusades, and Basil II being one of the most aggressive leaders so the design does fit him. It would feel more out of place for another leader though.

I think such limitation is unavoidable. Capturing centuries of history in a single reimagined leader is a near-impossible. The culture changing during the span doesn't make the job quite easy.
 
@anonxanemone , I would only add to your list specifically Graphically Unique Structures, whether Buildings, Improvements or Districts.

Your theme of a Unique Culture being absent from the game's Civs has been touched on in other threads, usually in the context of some kind of Underlying Population in every tile that either contributes to or has to be converted to your Civ, or a combination of many factors in the game now as a specific 'Culture' unique to each Civ.

Right now, many of the components of Culture are in fact chosen by the Player: Religion and all of its beliefs and tenets, Social and Civic 'Policies', types of Government, etc. Only Language is not addressed specifically, but one can assume that as part of the 'basic makeup' of each individual in-game Civ.

This is not a bad system, because elements of 'Culture' do change (usually slowly and haltingly) throughout history, and having a 'standard culture' for each Civ wold have to assume the development of that Civ will follow its historical model in every game, a concept which, frankly, would make me wonder why I should bother playing the game in the first place.

What the current system leaves out is that many aspects of culture, including Religion and Social 'Policies' are not chosen by design, but emerge as a result of events and mingling of populations - in other words, what happens in the individual game you are playing, not necessarily what you Want to happen. It also leaves out Multi-Cultural Civs, which have been around since the Beginning: the early Mesopotamian City-States and 'Empires' were all composed of individual cities that in many cases had developed somewhat different cultures, and in some cases languages, and today to regard, say, the United States or Great Britain or even China as having only One Culture Each would be very hard to justify.

I, for one, would like to see Culture as something more than just a set of Points that convert to Tourism that converts to a 'Cultural Victory'. It should be a defining characteristic or set of characteristics of the Civ, subject to change, resulting in occasional conflict or even major disruption . . .
 
What the current system leaves out is that many aspects of culture, including Religion and Social 'Policies' are not chosen by design, but emerge as a result of events and mingling of populations - in other words, what happens in the individual game you are playing, not necessarily what you Want to happen. It also leaves out Multi-Cultural Civs, which have been around since the Beginning: the early Mesopotamian City-States and 'Empires' were all composed of individual cities that in many cases had developed somewhat different cultures, and in some cases languages, and today to regard, say, the United States or Great Britain or even China as having only One Culture Each would be very hard to justify.

This is a very good point. There might be a little conflict between emphasizing a certain aspect of a civilization and considering the cosmopolitan quality of an empire. Using the modern day example of the United States, cultures are as diverse as the number of states the country it is composed of and not as uniform as we assume more ancient civilizations to be.
 
This is a very good point. There might be a little conflict between emphasizing a certain aspect of a civilization and considering the cosmopolitan quality of an empire. Using the modern day example of the United States, cultures are as diverse as the number of states the country it is composed of and not as uniform as we assume more ancient civilizations to be.

"Uniform" doesn't even describe Ancient/Classical States/Civs. In fact, a good case can be made that one of the great advances in Human political development was the discovery/invention of methods for incorporating and managing wildly varying cultures and groups, which resulted in the Roman and Persian Empires, and could even be applied to the 'unification' of China: the fact that that term is used to describe the process indicates that it wasn't exactly One Uniform Family of Han Chinese all getting together - it took a lot of work.

I think a case can be made that until the later development of Nationalism which related 'culture' (usually meaning ethnicity and language specifically) to Loyalty To The State, the normal political group was a City State or a wider group of peoples of varying degrees of loyalty sort of united under a hereditary ruling family. And the development of Nationalism as a binding force in Civs/States was a very uneven process: Dr Duffy in his book Experience of War in the Age of Reason devotes quite a few pages to the fact that French and English soldiers were the only ones in Western Europe in the mid-18th century CE that showed any signs of 'national' feeling, and this was centuries after both 'nations' had been formed! And, of course, despite their early Nationalism both saw later separatist ('Disloyal?") movements (Scotland, Ireland) or outright civil wars (the Vendee Revolt against the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, etc)
 
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