Is civ 6 PC

[Duke William of Normandy]

Colbert (the one that truly created modern France, more than Louis XIV or any king)

We could also give the modernization spot to Napoleon III who, while being not the greatest at foreign diplomacy, was an excellent domestic manager.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I honestly think that Charlemagne might work into his own separate civ, similar to how they gave Alexander Macedon, because as you said he's not French enough, or even German enough to be a leader for even both. Call it the Frankish Empire and I think it could work, though it would probably be on the bottom of civs we need, even the bottom of Europeans I would want.

Could also call it the Carolingian Empire if we didn't want confusion with France (which is technically West Francia anyway). I know it's just naming the empire after Charlemagne, but when we have civs like the Ottomans and potentially the Timurids or Chola named after ruling dynasties, and Alexander-the-civ, it almost feels appropriate to make explicit that a Charlemagne civ really exists for his own sake.

Though I do agree with @Republic of San Montuoso that I think the game would have overall been better without Alexander-the-civ.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Though I do agree with @Republic of San Montuoso that I think the game would have overall been better without Alexander-the-civ.

We all know you just really want the Balkans to have room for Bulgaria.

The only way I would have agreed to take Macedon out is if Alexander would have been the other leader for Greece instead of Gorgo.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

We could also give the modernization spot to Napoleon III who, while being not the greatest at foreign diplomacy, was an excellent domestic manager.

I've always though it'd be cool to give some love to Napoleon "lepetite" as he really was baller at beautifying Paris and helping France get back up to speed after the Napoleonic Wars...the bourbons/Louis Phillipe didn't do as much as he did. While it is true that he fed in Bismarck's master plans in the end and made an even bigger enemy for France in Germany, he brought back some much needed prestige to the country for the time being and I think would be a cool choice to teach people about the early-modern period in French history. Plus, he could clearly have a culturally ability so France as at least partially a cultural civ. Plus, more diplo options/abilities are always appreciated and could be another way to swing France

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Late to this party, but then, any discussion of 'PC' is usually a party I try to avoid.
But, for what they are worth, here's my take on it.

First, 'political correctness' is itself an Oxymoron (that's when your brain doesn't get enough oxygen so you do and say stupid things: another definition of Politics), since Politics and either Correctness or Truth aren't even in the same book, let alone belong in the same phrase. Politics is about getting what you want, by any legal or semi-legal method. Correctness is or should be about doing what is right, but that's not what PC means at all, it means getting what you want and what you want is 'recognition' of your Specialness.

Second, PC seems to be tiresomely equated with racial, cultural, or gender uniqueness, and all of those are biologically fictional. We all have the same DNA (except, of course, our Homo Sapiens Neanderthalsus or Chimpanzee posters, and even you are within 1%). Therefore, any variations are simply reactions to environment, natural or man-made over time. And if there is one thing even a superficial study of history will show, it is that cultural variations are near-infinite, and if any have lasted in any form until the present day, they All Work for someone. Gender Uniqueness is also largely fictional: we can change physical biology nearly at will, and gender identification has been shown to be largely psychological, not physical. You now literally "Pays yer money and takes yer choice".

Third, PC speech tends towards the cumbersome and inaccurate, and so it will be adopted only artificially and temporarily, and usually under coercion. For Example:
"Visually challenged" - does that mean they can't see very well or that they are hard to look at?
"Gender neutral" - show me one human being between the ages of 15 and 70 not in a coma that is neutral about their gender.
- And so on.

Finally:

I would say the line we have to walk is between history as a narrative and history as a process. Who leads a civ is important for people who focus on narrative, but at the end of the day is not as important to the unfolding of history.

History is a combination of the study of processes and the human attempts to control or react to them, and the individuals who, one way or the other, drove the reactions. The study of history has bounced back and forth between the two as primary: from Carlyle's Great Men on the one side to Marx's "Inevitable Forces" on the other. My personal view is that any attempt to really study history has to include both: few historical events make any sense without a thorough understanding of both the individuals involved and the processes that led up to them.
Civ has for several iterations now focused on the Individual in history: that's why we have animated Leaders in the game, and named Great People and Governors. You play not just as a Civilization, but as a Civilization led by an individual Great Leader - who is also Immortal, and maintains the same character and talents for 6000 years or more. Humankind, the new game entry into historical 4Xery, appears to be taking the Process view: there are no named Leaders of any kind, no named subordinates, governors, generals, merchants, etc. You work with Process, guiding the process by selecting various Factions with desirable traits until 'Fame' accumulation gains Victory - a victory condition remarkably devoid of any individual achievement, like winning battles or wars or discovering New Things.

So I will continue to write my book on the Battle of Moscow by examining both the development of German auftragstaktik in the context of Prussian politics of the 18th and 19th centuries and the actions of Captain Starchak of the Soviet paratroop forces in blocking the Warsaw Highway for several critical days in October 1941.

And I will continue to refer to someone as 'blind as a bat' instead of 'challenged', because my batty friends don't regard that as demeaning at all but do wonder why the guy with the white cane isn't squeaking more to find out what's in front of him . . .

 

[ManoftheHour333]

We all know you just really want the Balkans to have room for Bulgaria.

The only way I would have agreed to take Macedon out is if Alexander would have been the other leader for Greece instead of Gorgo.

^This. I would rather of had Bulgaria than Macedon. I still think Alex (Or Phillip II maybe) would get an additional UU though to make them a lil more distinctive. I never understood why they Hypaspist was a thing when the Greek UU is so similar...they both used spears but, the Hypaspist is a swordsman? Logic at it's finest

 

[PiR]

because Louis XIV was seen as the last "good" or "great" monarch before the monarchical decadence... even if, as a king, he was not especially a good one and would have been nobody without Colbert which, again, would make a very viable leader for France

And what about Vauban then?

OK, I propose to replace every historically most impactful leader by... its spouse or loved one. After all, we all know they were the ones who truly ruled, right?

So gather up first ladies and first gents, you are the new leaders of civ!

 

[Evie]

I honestly think that Charlemagne might work into his own separate civ, similar to how they gave Alexander Macedon, because as you said he's not French enough, or even German enough to be a leader for even both. Call it the Frankish Empire and I think it could work, though it would probably be on the bottom of civs we need, even the bottom of Europeans I would want.

Eh, just make him a dual alt leader to both FRA and GER. Well, provided your german leader isn't already a medieval emperor, otherwise there is some overlap there.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

^This. I would rather of had Bulgaria than Macedon. I still think Alex (Or Phillip II maybe) would get an additional UU though to make them a lil more distinctive. I never understood why they Hypaspist was a thing when the Greek UU is so similar...they both used spears but, the Hypaspist is a swordsman? Logic at it's finest

Well obviously we already have a Phillip II, so we wouldn't get another.

Maybe the reasoning for the hypaspist was they wanted to emphasize the use of spear-like weapons in the Hellenistic world, so they made a Classical era swordsman replacement that wielded spears.
Ideally I honestly think it would have been more interesting if they got an early pikeman replacement, because that's basically what the sarissa was, an early form of the pike which was used throughout the medieval era.

Honestly I could care less if Macedon was it's own civ, or if Alexander is leader to Greece, as long as he's in the game somehow. And no doubt that he would have come with a leader UU for Greece as well, considering he came with his own leader UU for Macedon anyway.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Deleted trolling and all the answers that went completely off topic. Please report trolling and do not answer it.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Late for the battle, but here's my opinion anyway.

I think a lot of people might mistake PC to inclusiveness. Both can be linked, of course, but while PC often has a bad reputation attached to it, less people consider being inclusive as something inherently bad.
And it's the core of the problems: words we use, definition we put on them, narrative that we deduce then... PC versus inclusiveness; historical "accuracy" against historical "accuracy".

Firaxis tried to be more inclusive, gender-related and race/culture/ethnicity related. Less male leaders, less european empires.
Of course, this will appear as a bad thing for people that grew up in an eurocentric culture. Only a fraction of white people controlled the world or have been prominent, and yet for those eurocentric people they "deserve" to be overrepresented. Because historical accuracy is more important than inclusiveness, but they don't realize that their historical "accuracy" is completely inaccurate and biased.

Has CdM be a less impactful leader on the History of France than Napoléon, Louis XIV or Charles de Gaulle? Maybe, but if we speak about impacts, Louis XI (completely modernizing the country from top to bottom), François I (making the country what it is today), Colbert (the one that truly created modern France, more than Louis XIV or any king) Clovis (the founder of the country according to the historical novel) should be considered. So why do we always return to the same three names? Because people are utter liars. They don't want "worthy" leaders, "legitimate" leaders, they just want what they know. But I'll teach you something:

The popularity of a leader is not at all a proof of his impact, his "worthiness" or anything that would make him better than a lesser known leader

And that's why I love Civ 6. Because, while we always speak about Charlemagne, Louis XIV or Napoléon, I had little knowledge about CdM. And, at the beginning, I hated her. But then I learnt to appreciate her, and I learnt about her, and I discovered that she was, indeed, a legitimate leader for France amongst the hundreds France could pick out.

It's as if inclusiveness forced people to learn more about History, and people hate it, because it destroy their fragile view of the world and challenge their knowledge.

And it works for everything: female leaders, non-european cultures, everything is worthy of learning, and Civ 6 is a tremendous medium for it. I learnt more about the Kongoleses (which, before, for me, were just the private gardens of Belgians), some of the History of New Zealand... all of that was good. I see absolutely nothing bad in the choices of leaders and civs. The main complains I have are that some abilities are terrible, but that's game design, not the lore around it.

Also, have you noticed that people that say that Political Correctness is made only to cater for some snowflakes minorities that whine for anything, and yet when the narrative deviates as little from what they're used to, they whines like the snowflakes they criticized before?

As for Slavery, indeed it's an interesting topic... Except that slavery, under one form or another, always existed (and some people would say that even our modern countries aren't free from some sorts of "light" slavery). In an incredibly large amount of cultures, nations, empires, throughout the ages, there pretty much always has been a caste, a subset of the population, that was deemed "not-like-us" or used for cheap labour: actual slaves, of course, but also untouchables, serfdom... My point is that "slavery", under many forms and through various levels of intensity, always existed... Therefore, why having to "explicit" it? If you want "slavery" so bad, just consider that, as an immortal leader controlling every move of your workers, you just have slaves. It's just a level of abstraction. I mean, a fish doesn't has a word for water, so why name a thing that could have no incidence on the gameplay because it would be omnipresent? Maybe just add a Industrial/Modern Era civic, "Emancipation", where the need for amenities and housing increases for your population, to represent your slaves freeing themselves.
Wanting to have explicitly slavery in this kind of game would not be good nor bad for me, but just completely unecessary and superfluous and, clearly, not worthy to be the main point of discussion.



As I said : why always those three names?
Charlemagne is not "French" enough to be considered a leader for France. His capital isn't even in actual France now. He was as much a leader for Germany than France (except that the dynasty seems more French), so either he's a dual leader, or we don't take him.
Napoléon, please, stop with the worship of this bloodthirsty ego atop of some mathematical theorems.
As for Louis XIV, yeah, it might works, even if I'd say that he's not necessarily the most representative of France...
Also, you keep saying that they're the most impactful, but, as I said, you "forget" to mention Louis XI, François I, Henri IV, Clovis, Colbert, Richelieu... Are you sure you're interested in "impactful" leaders or are you just catering to your own, pretty narrow narrow vision of the History of France where the same names came over and over without any subtelty?



I'd have prefered Richelieu too, but only because he could have had a magnificent cardinal hat and be all in red. And we all know that all inclusiveness is unworthy confronted to the power of MAGNIFICENT HATS!

You have touched here very important points.
1. Do devs should focus on inclusion and somehow force players to learn about new cultures or give them what they want, even if they are rooted in a certain culture and related point of view.
2. The game content is not infinite, so the inclusion of less known features usually means the exclusion of the others. If we have Catharine for France we will not have Napoleon. And then go to point 1 dilemma

And this is the main problem here because there is a large group of people who want to have a game full of as you would say "historically accurate" staff, but you have also a group of people who would like to learn and explore. So what devs should do. Because it is mixing water with fire here. In my opinion, it is not a problem of inclusiveness. It is a problem of its scale. In my opinion, the game is well balanced here. And I don't think we should push it for more.

And the last thing. This is all about the subjective approach. Eurocentrism is a keyword for some people just like political correctness for others. The only thing that matters is if Civ is interesting, or dull and if it's good or bad designed. And this should be our main concern.

 

[João III]

Eh, just make him a dual alt leader to both FRA and GER. Well, provided your german leader isn't already a medieval emperor, otherwise there is some overlap there.

I disagree, considering Karl der Große never led a distinct "France" or "Germany", but rather a forerunner empire. I feel like it'd be similar to having Basil II lead Greece or Augustus as an alternate to an Italian civ; the cultural identities are just too distinct.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

And the last thing. This is all about the subjective approach. Eurocentrism is a keyword for some people just like political correctness for others. The only thing that matters is if Civ is interesting, or dull and if it's good or bad designed. And this should be our main concern.

This!

 

[PhoenicianGold]

We all know you just really want the Balkans to have room for Bulgaria.

ARRRRGH, It just isn't fair.

The only way I would have agreed to take Macedon out is if Alexander would have been the other leader for Greece instead of Gorgo.

I don't think he was necessary, personally. I thought Gorgo was a really fun switch-up, and I liked generally that VI was initially trying to avoid most of the big European personalities to make the roster feel more on equal ground.

Late to this party, but then, any discussion of 'PC' is usually a party I try to avoid.
But, for what they are worth, here's my take on it.

First, 'political correctness' is itself an Oxymoron (that's when your brain doesn't get enough oxygen so you do and say stupid things: another definition of Politics), since Politics and either Correctness or Truth aren't even in the same book, let alone belong in the same phrase. Politics is about getting what you want, by any legal or semi-legal method. Correctness is or should be about doing what is right, but that's not what PC means at all, it means getting what you want and what you want is 'recognition' of your Specialness.

Politics is about achieving (apparently or by accord) judicious results through (apparently) sensible means. It, like any other ideologically and socially defined principle, is inextricably tied to and aims toward factual truth and social good. So no, it is not an oxymoron, unless you ascribe to the more limited/twisted idea that politics are some sort of a game of evading the truth. In which case, many similar perversions of "correctness" involve prioritizing winning over avoiding misrepresentation, and so no contradiction actually exists when you're not holding one half of the term to the same semantic strictness as the other.

Second, PC seems to be tiresomely equated with racial, cultural, or gender uniqueness, and all of those are biologically fictional. We all have the same DNA (except, of course, our Homo Sapiens Neanderthalsus or Chimpanzee posters, and even you are within 1%). Therefore, any variations are simply reactions to environment, natural or man-made over time. And if there is one thing even a superficial study of history will show, it is that cultural variations are near-infinite, and if any have lasted in any form until the present day, they All Work for someone. Gender Uniqueness is also largely fictional: we can change physical biology nearly at will, and gender identification has been shown to be largely psychological, not physical. You now literally "Pays yer money and takes yer choice".

PC is not equated with uniqueness, but representation and integration of non-traditional, non-dominant identities into the public consciousness. All PC is intended to do in an identitarian respect is to pull people out of the samey, safe, escapist narratives where everything defaults to Glengarry Glenross, and remind them that there is a whole spectrum of other, equally valid identities that exists outside of your typical WASPy, male-deferent, rural/suburban neighborhood. And yes, a lot of identitarian issues do amount predominantly to performativity, but the problem is that ignorance is kind of a self-perpetuating island (with respect to nearly any body of knowledge). Without exposure to alternative identities, people don't sympathize with them. When they don't sympathize with them, they don't see diversity as an opportunity to engage with differing experiences but simply as an obstacle to more comfortable, familiar experiences. And if they continue to approach exposure with repulson, they continue to fail to sympathize with them.

Third, PC speech tends towards the cumbersome and inaccurate, and so it will be adopted only artificially and temporarily, and usually under coercion. For Example:
"Visually challenged" - does that mean they can't see very well or that they are hard to look at?
"Gender neutral" - show me one human being between the ages of 15 and 70 not in a coma that is neutral about their gender.
- And so on.

"Visually challenged" is a poor example, I don't think anyone would confuse it as the latter, because using the term "visual" to describe someone's appearance as opposed to their sight is clearly an inferior term to something like "aesthetically challenged" or "athletically challenged" or "genetically challenged" or even "poorly lit" or "obscured" or any other wealth of terms which come closer to the latter meaning. It's pretty clear one interpretation is a lot closer to what is intended than the other.

And I don't think "gender neutral" is a particularly great example, either. It's typically only used to refer to a gendered object as gender ambivalent, which in itself doesn't care about anyone's personal gender convictions. Just because aspects of gender bending and fluidity request, encourage, or even require gender neutral terms, objects, accessories, or spaces, doesn't mean the people themselves are neutral. Although I personally think--and there are many mature individuals in the community that think similarly--is that the exact term matters less than the conscientiousness behind it. In that sense many are fairly neutral about being misgendered.

 

[fy00sh]

Third, PC speech tends towards the cumbersome and inaccurate, and so it will be adopted only artificially and temporarily, and usually under coercion. For Example:
"Visually challenged" - does that mean they can't see very well or that they are hard to look at?
"Gender neutral" - show me one human being between the ages of 15 and 70 not in a coma that is neutral about their gender.

I agree most "overly PC" speech is just annoying to use and doesn't really accomplish much, but I do disagree on "gender neutral" being one of those terms. First of all there's a good few people I know irl (including myself!) that do feel in some way "neutral" about their gender, but more importantly if the term "gender neutral" is being used correctly then it's being used to refer to nongendered terms, or to bathrooms, or to pronouns, and not to people, and in those contexts it's a very useful term to have.
edit: ninja'd by @PhoenicianGold who said what I was getting at better than I did

 

[Kwami]

"Visually challenged" is a poor example, I don't think anyone would confuse it as the latter, because using the term "visual" to describe someone's appearance as opposed to their sight is clearly an inferior term to something like "aesthetically challenged" or "athletically challenged" or "genetically challenged" or even "poorly lit" or "obscured" or any other wealth of terms which come closer to the latter meaning. It's pretty clear one interpretation is a lot closer to what is intended than the other.

Well, "visually challenged" is a nonsense term anyway. The term preferred by most of the community is "blind person", or perhaps "visually impaired person" for someone who isn't blind.

 

[Aristos]

Absolutely not! Political correctness is a madness that has infected society and needs to be resisted.

Indeed. And it should be resisted everywhere, and anywhere. Because it destroys everything, including creativity, and history. "Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it"... remember? How can you learn from the past if you erase it for "political" reasons?

A historical-based game, no matter how loose the connection might be, is an inevitable part of that process of learning (or not) from our own history. Any distortion to it, especially based on "political" reasons, doesn't help such learning process that much, now does it?

 

[BuchiTaton]

CIV is not PC is just keep the ballance between the different kinds of markets that want to appeal.
- Want to keep your western centric buyers? Hold the regional focus on western history as the better represented region.
- Some money from minority representation quota? Add minor native nations only for the western markets that care about that like NZ or Canada.
- Fear to insult the nationalists and government of foreign markets? Keep them as massive "allways one nation" blob civs like China and India.

This is not about game design, is pure give something to each one to keep the game selling.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Indeed. And it should be resisted everywhere, and anywhere. Because it destroys everything, including creativity, and history. "Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it"... remember? How can you learn from the past if you erase it for "political" reasons?

A historical-based game, no matter how loose the connection might be, is an inevitable part of that process of learning (or not) from our own history. Any distortion to it, especially based on "political" reasons, doesn't help such learning process that much, now does it?

You know I think sometimes people take things too seriously. We are talking here about the video game where Americans can build the Pyramids, and Aztecs can build a spaceship. We are not talking about a high school historical core curriculum. And the one and the main thing that destroys everything, including creativity is dogmatism. No matter left or right-sided

 

[PhoenicianGold]

You have touched here very important points.
1. Do devs should focus on inclusion and somehow force players to learn about new cultures or give them what they want, even if they are rooted in a certain culture and related point of view.
2. The game content is not infinite, so the inclusion of less known features usually means the exclusion of the others. If we have Catharine for France we will not have Napoleon. And then go to point 1 dilemma

And this is the main problem here because there is a large group of people who want to have a game full of as you would say "historically accurate" staff, but you have also a group of people who would like to learn and explore. So what devs should do. Because it is mixing water with fire here. In my opinion, it is not a problem of inclusiveness. It is a problem of its scale. In my opinion, the game is well balanced here. And I don't think we should push it for more.

And the last thing. This is all about the subjective approach. Eurocentrism is a keyword for some people just like political correctness for others. The only thing that matters is if Civ is interesting, or dull and if it's good or bad designed. And this should be our main concern.

I agree with this, although as I've somewhat tangentially noted previously, maybe in another thread, there's a spectrum of familiarity which people find "interesting." The more conservative-thinking a person is (generally, not politically), the more comfort and interest they find in reinforcement of the familiar. The more progressive-thinking a person is, the more excitement and interest they find in refining what exists into new and hopefully improved forms. Everyone has aspects of both, but most people's thinking is dominated by one or the other, and in different areas. (I would argue that American culture as a whole in the past few decades leans conservative, based off of much tentpole media strives to avoid challenging viewers--I'm not talking indie darlings, but the big studio stuff that even casual moderates thoughtlessly throw their excess income at).

So really, whether it is received as "interesting" is the true balance to be hit. Because conservatives will find rote traditionalism and fan favorites "interesting," and progressives will find overlooked or recontextualized contexts "interesting," and the game really can't be purely one or the other. Hence, the "one third old, one third new, one third improved" model I think was one of several very deliberate design decisions to accomplish precisely that. (also, the soft 6 male, 3 female leader rule is, imo, a heavily conceded or calculated measure to increase diversity without actually rocking the conservative boat, given that it still roughly valued men twice as much--given that all of the female choices were quite flavorful and thoughtful choices, I don't think anyone has a right to be complaining that there is too much woman in the game. Not when we have Alexander, Robert, Laurier, Curtain, and Ambiorix, but still many extremely strong women choices like Diyha, Nur Jahan, Margaret I, Irene, who were still passed over because it just wasn't in the numbers for them. The gender balance is fine; it did about as much as progressives could reasonably hope for VI, and it still gave conservatives much of what they wanted.)

Indeed. And it should be resisted everywhere, and anywhere. Because it destroys everything, including creativity, and history. "Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it"... remember? How can you learn from the past if you erase it for "political" reasons?

I think basing one's values on sweeping heuristics is a very slippery slope...the very nature of heuristics--or any truth statement ranging from quips to hypotheses--is that they are only as accurate as how specifically they are expressed, and only within the limitations of the circumstances they were originally contemplated to describe. Science is usually robust and prospective and survives extrapolation, but heuristics are not and very frequently lose value the further out you travel from the incidental.