I played the [pick 30+1 civs mindgame] ... and it made me forgive the developers a bit for some of their choices

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Civilization was originally created as a Western take on world history by a Western studio for a Western audience.

World history as seen from a Western perspective is a different story than World history as seen from an Asian, African, or any other perspective.
Events which occurred far east of the Euphrates or far south of the Sahara had less immediate impact on Western history.
A Western game about human civilization should of course touch on civilizations and cultures from distant lands, but more importance should be placed on Western countries and their history

Even so, Civilization started out with the Zulu in Sub-Saharan Africa, which would make more sense as a Modern Age civ than the Boers based on progression? Although Ethiopia would also make as much sense as a Modern Age civ than the Zulu as well.

That being said this is the first game I could possibly see the Boers getting in. Although they would make more sense if they came from an Exploration Dutch civ, not a native civ from Africa.

 

[Xandinho]

Civilization was originally created as a Western take on world history by a Western studio for a Western audience.

World history as seen from a Western perspective is a different story than World history as seen from an Asian, African, or any other perspective.
Events which occurred far east of the Euphrates or far south of the Sahara had less immediate impact on Western history.
A Western game about human civilization should of course touch on civilizations and cultures from distant lands, but more importance should be placed on Western countries and their history

It's great for the sales of the series that the game has expanded to new markets, but I wouldn't want it to lose essential parts of its identity by doing so.
Just as a Persona game set outside of Japan or made foremost for non-Japanese audiences would change the soul of those games, so too could the same happen to Civilization.

I'm sure one day a Japanese studio will try their hand at a Civ-killer, and it will be an interesting take on the genre (hopefully better than Humankind or Ara).
I'll likely give it a try, as I do many Historical 4x Strategy Games; but it will be very different from Civilization

Well, we can see that the game’s name is Civilization, not Western Civilization.

I certainly wouldn’t buy a game where every square kilometer of Europe was a civilization and the entire East was reduced to just half a dozen civs.

 

[Maniac]

I did strongly consider going 8 > 10 > 12 but the issue is that the later appearing factions are meant to be playing the game as well, just hidden. So either the game would be limited to 8 all the way through or you need equal picks throughout.

The developers are not gonna waste CPU cycles and RAM on letting civs play on an inaccessible continent. They are gonna generate the continent and civs out of thin air the moment the Exploration Age hits. So it's perfectly fine to have fewer ancient age choices than Exploration/Modern choices.

 

[Evolena]

The developers are not gonna waste CPU cycles and RAM on letting civs play on an inaccessible continent. They are gonna generate the continent and civs out of thin air the moment the Exploration Age hits.

They stated very clearly the contrary during the Antiquity stream.

 

[Maniac]

They stated very clearly the contrary during the Antiquity stream.

That's just marketing speak. It would simply be insane to let AI civs play in the background (and thus slow down the game), when the player isn't going to notice the difference at all.

 

[pokiehl]

That's just marketing speak. It would simply be insane to let AI civs play in the background (and thus slow down the game), when the player isn't going to notice the difference at all.

Nope. They’ve absolutely clarified that there is in fact a full game going on. They even referenced being beaten to wonders by civs in the "distant lands" during the Antiquity age.

It’s not a strange approach at all. It’s the only way to guarantee an organically developed "distant lands" section.

 

[Maniac]

Nope. They’ve absolutely clarified that there is in fact a full game going on. They even referenced being beaten to wonders by civs in the distant lands.

It’s not an “insane” approach at all. It’s the only way to guarantee an organically developed second continent.

In Civ1 the AI didn't build wonders. They just were randomly given some from time to time.
How would one be able to judge if development looks organic? Also keep in mind that AFAIK they will allow players to start a game in the Exploration Age, so they need to write code to generate a civ in the Exploration Age anyway.
Even if the AI did play the entire game, this doesn't affect that it's ok to have fewer ancient era civ choices than exploration era ones. As the human player first encounters these civs in the exploration age, they can't be turned off by weird civ evolutions. For example they couldn't be bothered by the Mississippi turning into Ming China.

Edit: Actually, precisely because the human players won't see weird civ switches in the distant lands, it's ok for there to be a limited or rather overlapping number of routes from ancient civs to turn into exploration civs. It's the transition from exploration to modern where there should be sufficient choice. So something like a 8-8-14 or 9-9-12 split would make sense.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Well, we can see that the game’s name is Civilization, not Western Civilization.

I certainly wouldn’t buy a game where every square kilometer of Europe was a civilization and the entire East was reduced to just half a dozen civs.

The greater mediterranean area probably should have the highest amount of representatives, proportional to the amount of available slots. The region was a hotbed for empires, with many unique culturally distinct civilizations. (I include both Europe and Mesopotamia into this area btw).

Also, nearly all of these cultures left written records and were generally well-attested.

There probably should be more European civs than what gets shipped at launch, but not many more. It's more that two 2 Per era is a low number because we already have a large amount of western leaders -every one of them defaults to Rome or Greece and it would be better to have a third option available for them to pivot from (Gauls, Goths, Norse) and into (HRE, The Rus', Byzantium)

Additionally, if you look at the empires outside of Europe - they were HUGE. The Mongol Empire was HUGE. The Achaemenid Empire was HUGE. China is HUGE. Russia is GIGANTIC. In those areas, the amount of Civs you can represent per square area is low (but the flip side is that most can be represented across all three era's in a more or less straight line.)

Now I'm not defending anything a specific person here has said. Nonetheless, to have more "Western" of "Middle-Eastern" civs makes sense from a designer perspective. Well-attested Civs, recognisable Civs, and just the sheer amount of Civs available will all factor into that. The effort the devs have to put into delivering something like the Shawnee (and it was a MASSIVE effort, especially for a DLC Civ) cannot always be replicated. If you're making a left-field choice, like Shawnee, you should make it count. Which makes such civilizations quality-over-quantity.

(and point/counterpoint is Isabella's Spain which barely feels like Spain (especially when led by Isabella), and Ming which feels a slightly less boring version of Civ6's Korea)

 

[Lord Lakely]

The developers are not gonna waste CPU cycles and RAM on letting civs play on an inaccessible continent. They are gonna generate the continent and civs out of thin air the moment the Exploration Age hits. So it's perfectly fine to have fewer ancient age choices than Exploration/Modern choices.

Loads of assumptions. But ultimately the distant lands are Schrödinger's continents.

The way the devs framed it, is that the distant lands exist, but that they're off-limits in the first age. Like whatever. Lands in the fog of war don't have to take up extra CPU though. the biggest CPU spikes occur when interacting with the interface, when you pop up menus (trauma triggers from when Millennia crashed my entire computer when I clicked TOO FAST after opening a combat screen on like turn three - I HATE YOU MILLENNIA!!!) and animations. None of those things are relevant to whatever happens in the Distant lands.

 

[Maniac]

Lands in the fog of war don't have to take up extra CPU though. the biggest CPU spikes occur when interacting with the interface, when you pop up menus (trauma triggers from when Millennia crashed my entire computer when I clicked TOO FAST after opening a combat screen on like turn three - I HATE YOU MILLENNIA!!!) and animations. None of those things are relevant to whatever happens in the Distant lands.

A larger active map would increase the time inbetween turns though.
Anyway, we can't know for sure how the devs implemented it until we have the game in our hands. Whatever the case though, it doesn't change the point that, since the player does not interact with distant land ancient civs, it's no problem to have weird civ conversions for them going from ancient to exploration, so it's ok to have a system where there are more modern civ choices than there are ancient civ choices.

 

[Zaarin]

The developers are not gonna waste CPU cycles and RAM on letting civs play on an inaccessible continent. They are gonna generate the continent and civs out of thin air the moment the Exploration Age hits. So it's perfectly fine to have fewer ancient age choices than Exploration/Modern choices.

Aside from the fact that the devs have stated otherwise, as others have pointed out, this is literally what happens now when you play a Continents map.

 

[dagriggstar]

While weird pathing was a minor concern (that will be noticed due to age 1 unique improvements/buildings being on the map AND being beaten to probably associated wonders) I was more concerned with not having duplicates. Like how would you feel if you have gone Han to Ming, you get to the distant lands and there’s the Mongols with Han great walls ?

Whatever number of antiquity choices are in your base game, with the way they seem to have designed things, that’s the maximum number of players you can have in a game.

 

[Xandinho]

The greater mediterranean area probably should have the highest amount of representatives, proportional to the amount of available slots. The region was a hotbed for empires, with many unique culturally distinct civilizations. (I include both Europe and Mesopotamia into this area btw).

Also, nearly all of these cultures left written records and were generally well-attested.

There probably should be more European civs than what gets shipped at launch, but not many more. It's more that two 2 Per era is a low number because we already have a large amount of western leaders -every one of them defaults to Rome or Greece and it would be better to have a third option available for them to pivot from (Gauls, Goths, Norse) and into (HRE, The Rus', Byzantium)

Additionally, if you look at the empires outside of Europe - they were HUGE. The Mongol Empire was HUGE. The Achaemenid Empire was HUGE. China is HUGE. Russia is GIGANTIC. In those areas, the amount of Civs you can represent per square area is low (but the flip side is that most can be represented across all three era's in a more or less straight line.)

Now I'm not defending anything a specific person here has said. Nonetheless, to have more "Western" of "Middle-Eastern" civs makes sense from a designer perspective. Well-attested Civs, recognisable Civs, and just the sheer amount of Civs available will all factor into that. The effort the devs have to put into delivering something like the Shawnee (and it was a MASSIVE effort, especially for a DLC Civ) cannot always be replicated. If you're making a left-field choice, like Shawnee, you should make it count. Which makes such civilizations quality-over-quantity.

(and point/counterpoint is Isabella's Spain which barely feels like Spain (especially when led by Isabella), and Ming which feels a slightly less boring version of Civ6's Korea)

I understand, but when I said "the East," I was referring to more than just the geographical East; I meant everything that isn't culturally European (Europe and its colonial derivatives). In other words, the pre-colonial Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

But it’s important to note that Civ7 is doing a good job of balancing representation across most regions (though there are still underrepresented areas like South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Mesopotamia). Two European civilizations out of ten per era seems reasonable. Even if we consider that there are post-colonial European nations in the Modern Age, I'd definitely not say Civ7 is Eurocentric. I think they got the balance much better this time than Civ6 did at launch.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The developers are not gonna waste CPU cycles and RAM on letting civs play on an inaccessible continent. They are gonna generate the continent and civs out of thin air the moment the Exploration Age hits. So it's perfectly fine to have fewer ancient age choices than Exploration/Modern choices.

Ok, here's why it is wrong:
1. The game eventually reveals the whole map and it has to play as all civilizations anyway and in much more advanced state. So, if the device is capable of running modern age, it would have no problem running hidden civs in antiquity.
2. Not playing the game as far away civs would require writing a whole code for generating those civilizations before exploration, which has to look more or less like civ natural progression (considering all potential map scripts, settings, etc.). Not only that's a huge pile of developer work (close to writing a second game), but it also would require a lot of resources at age transition - and this means a lot of waiting time.

No sane developer would do that. Just making hidden civs play game normally is way, way easier.

The only exception is the case where you play antiquity-only. I'm pretty sure in this case there will be a setting for far lands just not exist.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Imagine you play antiquity only and you're clearly mopping up on your continent and right before your clear victory the game tells you "a faraway civ has won the game" when you don't even know that there is another place where a civ could exist!

 

[El Castellano]

I picked Aragon simply because Isabella and Ferdinand were rulers of Aragon, were they not?

Just to clarify it. Isabel the Catholic never ruled on the crown of Aragon. Isabel was the queen and maximum authority in Castile, and Fernando the same in Aragon. It is true that Fernando ended up being one of the specific regents of Castile after Isabel's death. But Isabel never had power in Aragon.

 

[GeneralZift]

First time I'm hearing of the 'Hellenic Republic'

 

[Krikkit1]

Imagine you play antiquity only and you're clearly mopping up on your continent and right before your clear victory the game tells you "a faraway civ has won the game" when you don't even know that there is another place where a civ could exist!

I think Antiquity only would be an exception (ie no distant Lands generated)

 

[CivKirk64]

Imagine you play antiquity only and you're clearly mopping up on your continent and right before your clear victory the game tells you "a faraway civ has won the game" when you don't even know that there is another place where a civ could exist!

You can't win the game in antiquity, winning the game means racking up legacy points along the path for all 3 ages together.
They've said they are simulating the distant lands and then expanding access to it at the transition. The distant civs would be working down their own legacy paths to various levels of success.

 

[Siptah]

You can't win the game in antiquity, winning the game means racking up legacy points along the path for all 3 ages together.
They've said they are simulating the distant lands and then expanding access to it at the transition. The distant civs would be working down their own legacy paths to various levels of success.

They said "imagine you play antiquity only". We know that it is possible to play age-confined games, you don't have to play all 3 ages consecutively. Hence, if you play antiquity only, you presumably can win the game in antiquity by some metric. Whether the first to reach the end of a legacy path wins, or the total of acquire legacy points is decisive, or something different altogether is unclear as of yet. That said, I doubt that the distant lands civs can win an antiquity only game.