Mapping Peoples and States onto Civs

[pineappledan]

The video game franchise has no interest or use for an academically rigorous and coherent construction of civilizations when building its roster of playable factions. They will portray who they think will be popular, based on who their consumer market is and who customers will pay money to see. That said, even though ''a more coherent view on how civilizations in general [...] should be represented in the game" will never be adopted, it's still fun to think about.

First off, I think the strongest marker for what would be considered a civilization is a unique material culture, most clearly expressed in a unique architectural style and aesthetic. This is basically the gamified version of the idea of a cultural area. In a civ game, this would be most clearly expressed by civs having a clearly unique city tile architecture. Basically, if all of the humans on earth disappeared and space aliens 1000 years from now looked at the ruins left behind, how would they categorize the different styles and materials they found? One of the hallmarks for the traditional definition of a civilization is monumental architecture, after all.

So how would I handle syncretic cultures, such as a Hellenized Iranian empire like the Seleucids or a Persianized Turko-Mongolic empire like the Gurkani? I wouldn't. Players make syncretic cultures through their choices by adopting disparate policies/governments, conquering another civ and integrating their population into their empire, spreading their cultural influence, etc. The mixing of cultures is depicted through emergent gameplay. The exception to that is that I would reserve space for something I would call 'imperial civilizations', empires whose emergence, spread, and legacy were unique experiments of global import which transcended cultural spheres, and the franchise would be remiss to exclude them simply because they elude a neat cultural box. Examples of this would be the Islamic caliphates, the Latin-American Empires of Spain and Portugal, the Northern European Colonial-Industrial projects, Global Communism, and the Pax Americana.

 

[Naokaukodem]

If we are surrounded since the start by peoples, I think culture power (=output) should make it so you absorb peoples faster, or will be absorbed if you do really bad. Therefore, I think there might be the need of more cultural buildings since start, unless you want to rush the theater squares.

Making culture a major factor for a pacific growth and expansion would balance culture with science.

Rest the assimilation of other major civ's cities/population, but there's the problem of high difficulty levels that would make it too hard to do/not being assimilated ourselves. (and the obligation to go full military ?)

However, note that if you are absorbed, you could still be a faction with its chief, with limited powers maybe.

Anyway we should find a way to make resurrections more familiar. Problem is if you make it depend on culture strenght, it could be even harder in higher difficulty modes, because you couldn't rely so much on military. Maybe make it depend more on "coercion points" ? (see signature)

Or, as you play a major civilization, you sole existence would prevent you to be absorbed in any way by any other major civilization, provided you have a minimal culture output, and that one shouldn't be high. (a monument should do the trick for a long time)

That way, factions that develop a monument early are eligeble for major civs. (with a limit in each setup ?) They could be far or very close, opening early wars. Maybe you should have to build "destroy monument" in order to forbid them to resurrect ?

I-I don't know, there's too much going on in my head now.

 

[BuchiTaton]

If we are surrounded since the start by peoples, I think culture power (=output) should make it so you absorb peoples faster, or will be absorbed if you do really bad. Therefore, I think there might be the need of more cultural buildings since start, unless you want to rush the theater squares.

Making culture a major factor for a pacific growth and expansion would balance culture with science.

Rest the assimilation of other major civ's cities/population, but there's the problem of high difficulty levels that would make it too hard to do/not being assimilated ourselves. (and the obligation to go full military ?)

However, note that if you are absorbed, you could still be a faction with its chief, with limited powers maybe.

Anyway we should find a way to make resurrections more familiar. Problem is if you make it depend on culture strenght, it could be even harder in higher difficulty modes, because you couldn't rely so much on military. Maybe make it depend more on "coercion points" ? (see signature)

Or, as you play a major civilization, you sole existence would prevent you to be absorbed in any way by any other major civilization, provided you have a minimal culture output, and that one shouldn't be high. (a monument should do the trick for a long time)

That way, factions that develop a monument early are eligeble for major civs. (with a limit in each setup ?) They could be far or very close, opening early wars. Maybe you should have to build "destroy monument" in order to forbid them to resurrect ?

I-I don't know, there's too much going on in my head now.

I am all for the return of a CIV4 like culture system, but of course upgraded. So strengthen your own culture would be a way to convert the population in your empire that have a different culture, BUT this is one of multipe way to deal with it. Some points:
- The Heritage is the ethnocultural identity of you population units (Denizens), there are other two values; Belief (religion) and Class (social caste).
- Cultural influence comes not only from cultural buildings, great works, wonders and turism, but also from Cultural Products that include Ceramics, Jewelry and Textiles from Workshops in early ages, but also things like Movies from Studios and Dishes in Resorts.
- With the Heritage come a Tradition, a bonus, unit, building, resource or other unique provided when such Heritage is integrated.
Each civ start with their own Heritage accepted, but you can incorporate some more (a limited number 3* or 4? at the last era) when such populations represent X% of your total population. By the way you should be still capable of keep minorities happy and quite loyal if you have a proper supply of necessities and amenities, plus humanistic policies.
- Is important to point also that you can get people from others cultures not just by conquest but also by immigration, attracted to your cities by ideologies that welcome immigrants and also direct decision in events (like request to accept refugies).

Of course manage different Heritages could be difficult and a potential source of conflicts and/or a limiting factor for some actions (like declare wars), so the player should decide the way to deal with this.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I am all for the return of a CIV4 like culture system, but of course upgraded. So strengthen your own culture would be a way to convert the population in your empire that have a different culture, BUT this is one of multipe way to deal with it. Some points:
- The Heritage is the ethnocultural identity of you population units (Denizens), there are other two values; Belief (religion) and Class (social caste).
- Cultural influence comes not only from cultural buildings, great works, wonders and turism, but also from Cultural Products that include Ceramics, Jewelry and Textiles from Workshops in early ages, but also things like Movies from Studios and Dishes in Resorts.
- With the Heritage come a Tradition, a bonus, unit, building, resource or other unique provided when such Heritage is integrated.
Each civ start with their own Heritage accepted, but you can incorporate some more (a limited number 3* or 4? at the last era) when such populations represent X% of your total population. By the way you should be still capable of keep minorities happy and quite loyal if you have a proper supply of necessities and amenities, plus humanistic policies.
- Is important to point also that you can get people from others cultures not just by conquest but also by immigration, attracted to your cities by ideologies that welcome immigrants and also direct decision in events (like request to accept refugies).

Of course manage different Heritages could be difficult and a potential source of conflicts and/or a limiting factor for some actions (like declare wars), so the player should decide the way to deal with this.

It's not so much the return of Civ4 cultural wars (that I would like to avoid, precisely), but a key value of cultural output that could have effects on tribes surrounding you. (consideing you are surrounded by tribes just like yourself) For example, if you open with a monument, the googy huts around may pop a settler, in terms of old Civ gameplay. In terms of "my Civ", you would suddenly possess whole tribes with their population points wandering on the map, like gatherers, hunters, warriors, workers and settlers. So starting with a monument or a palace should be very strong. Maybe put some obstacle into it : you need more pop to build a palace in reasonnable time frame, and you need some events to happen to take conscience of your specificities as a tribe, like a won battle or something, or an encounter of different habits civ, to build a monument. (or you need a tech)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's not so much the return of Civ4 cultural wars (that I would like to avoid, precisely), but a key value of cultural output that could have effects on tribes surrounding you. (consideing you are surrounded by tribes just like yourself) For example, if you open with a monument, the googy huts around may pop a settler, in terms of old Civ gameplay. In terms of "my Civ", you would suddenly possess whole tribes with their population points wandering on the map, like gatherers, hunters, warriors, workers and settlers. So starting with a monument or a palace should be very strong. Maybe put some obstacle into it : you need more pop to build a palace in reasonnable time frame, and you need some events to happen to take conscience of your specificities as a tribe, like a won battle or something, or an encounter of different habits civ, to build a monument. (or you need a tech)

- And this 'early days' culture influence would be heavily influenced or driven by Religion, which was one of the greatest 'cultural influences' of the time. Look at Gobekli Tepe or the Henges all over northern Europe for examples of labor-intensive religious centers as cultural nodes. Also note that Uruk, one of the earliest large cities (+20,000 population) was built around a pair of religious sites that had already been there for some time, so that it is now hypothesized that they may have been the reason population gravitated to the city site rather than any special food sources or strictly 'political' reasons.

 

[Naokaukodem]

- And this 'early days' culture influence would be heavily influenced or driven by Religion, which was one of the greatest 'cultural influences' of the time. Look at Gobekli Tepe or the Henges all over northern Europe for examples of labor-intensive religious centers as cultural nodes. Also note that Uruk, one of the earliest large cities (+20,000 population) was built around a pair of religious sites that had already been there for some time, so that it is now hypothesized that they may have been the reason population gravitated to the city site rather than any special food sources or strictly 'political' reasons.

Yeah why not. I always thought religion should be a great part of culture. Problem is : in nowaday Civs, they are two distinct yields. How would you deal with it ? (I have no idea right now)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Yeah why not. I always thought religion should be a great part of culture. Problem is : in nowaday Civs, they are two distinct yields. How would you deal with it ? (I have no idea right now)

To me that's not a problem, considering Religious Tourism is a thing, and was in history as well. Faith is even currently used for late game purchasing naturalists and rock bands for cultural purposes.

For Civ 7 I'd like to see religion being one half the cultural victory, with the other half being the current tourism part. Instead of requiring you to convert other civs, you would at least have to have the majority of your cities under your religion as part of your culture. Converting other civilizations to your religion, especially if they already founded one, would diminish part of their original culture.
As for civilizations that did not originally found a religion, or got converted, they would have the ability to reform a religion in their territory and make it their own. They would get an extra founder belief and a new follower belief in addition to the founder and worship belief that the original religion already had.

 

[Naokaukodem]

To me that's not a problem, considering Religious Tourism is a thing, and was in history as well. Faith is even currently used for late game purchasing naturalists and rock bands for cultural purposes.

I mean how that would work out in the perspective of balancing science output with culture one ? (faith is already pretty useful I would say - culture too, I guess, but I don't use it so much and neglect completely theater squares in all my games)

 

[BuchiTaton]

Gonna quote myself about religion and culture...

By the way Religion was better in CIV4 and CIV5 than CIV6 despite until the later was its own victory type. So, I would like to get back the religious elements as part of Cultural and Diplomatic gameplay.
One example of this overlap is the use of Dogmatism as one of the ideologies/policies/civics/beliefs/tenets (since can be abstracted in-game as part of culture, religion and government). People here are talking about religion and its relation to scientific progress, and is true that religion itself is not opposite to technological advance, but both religious and secular movements have examples of dogmatic censure and persecution of novel ideas.
So in-game Dogmatism could be one of your ideologies (as part of an Ideology System that incorporates culture+religion+government) that benefits your own culture (key for cultural victory) but at the cost of reduced science yield. While Laicism helps you against foreign religious influence (for enemy cultural and diplomatic victories) but this time at the cost of your use of religious gain (for own cultural and diplomatic victories).
On the positive relation of religion and technological advance could be others ideologies like Monasticism and Esotericism. While Skepticism add for science and Pluralism help with diplomacy and science, and Syncretism provide culture and diplomacy.

Like you can see I want to unify again some elements of the game in a system that touch multiple aspects. Talking about Ideologies they can be classied by tiers and themes, for example you have slots for Administration, Legitimacy, Diplomacy, Economy, Belief, etc. The decision events allows you to get new and change Ideologies, being these more significative (even with some unique abilities and mechanics), mutually exclusive and specialized.
Here the use of Religion could be a great way to fortify and funnel your culture to BOTH denizens (own and foreign population) and players (civs leaders in diplomatic actions). Then there is no more a Religious Victory neither a Faith yield, but a powerfull way to achieve others victories (mostly Cultural).

 

[Naokaukodem]

Your concepts seems rather vague and nebulous, at least to me. (I'm not good at understanding people) The only thing that I can understand in concrete terms is at the very end of your post : no more faith yield. So, would you make culture points expandable like faith ones are in Civ6, or would they be kept like in cultural point in Civ6 : a "non-accumulating" yield (which only output per turn is visible I mean) ?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I mean how that would work out in the perspective of balancing science output with culture one ? (faith is already pretty useful I would say - culture too, I guess, but I don't use it so much and neglect completely theater squares in all my games)

I mean you could also not build campuses and neglect science as well, making your culture output stronger.
Another concept I've seen pop up is combining science and culture into a "knowledge" yield. I don't know if Civ would go in that direction but realistically it might make more sense in which libraries, academies, and universities etc. would help toward cultural advancement as well.

 

[BuchiTaton]

- FOOD, as population sustentation and growth. The population consume each turn X amount of food and the surplur determines the rate of population increase. Deployed armies have a higger rate of comsumption. If food production is under consumption the population stop growing, lost bonus provided, immigrate to other civs and finally rebel.

- PRODUCTION, is your cities capacity to transform resources and turn them into infrastructure, vehicles, equipment and manufactured goods. So production come from your laborers and their efficiency is determined by their number, their satisfaction, your technologies, raw materials avaibility, industrial facilities and policies. So production is not "consumed" but "used" each turn (time) by a number of queues per city, this would help for a viable "tall gameplay" of efficient high production capacity cities.

- WEALTH, the true currency in-game, used as common unit to pay for most units and buildings, also to buy resources, territory, techs and others diplomatic actions like war reparations. Taxation, trade routes and corporations are the regular source of wealth, natural resources and manufactured goods are part of it but the number of the ones that gives you wealth directly should be limited (like precious metal mines and cash crops plantations).

- CULTURE, as a influence measurement, the appeal of your Ideologies with denizens (own and foreign) over the ideologies of others civs. This cover al ideological aspect of the game (heritage/religion/goverment) and comes from cultural products (Textiles, Ceramics, Jewelry, Movies, Cuisine, etc.), cultural buildings (included wonders), great people (and their Great Works), and expand through trade routes, religion, mass media and tourism.
New ideologies themselves are generated by "inspiration-like" mission that triggers decision events (with multiple options), then ideologies spread between denizens (these also have relevant value for diplomatic interactions).

- SCIENCE, is the progress that starts to be generated when each of your Research Lines is asigned with a project to develop a technology from the Tech-Tree, so the ammount of science is NOT spent by the new Technology researched, on the contrary the science is produced by the research and when finalized this amount is added to your global accumluated of science to achieve milestones that unlock additional Research Lines and allows to Advance Era.
You start with just one Research Line but later get more, and their projects are not only to investigate new techs from the Tech-Tree, but also Academic Grant (attract Great people like Scientists, Engineers, Philosophers and Artists), School Specialization (provide temporal bonus to certain areas like Agronomy to Food, Economy to Wealth, Theology to Religion,etc.) Selective Breeding (improve and/or create copies of crops and livestock resources) and build parts of the Science victory mechanism.

So we can see that each one has their own ways to be generated and applied, not just "mana" of different colors used in the same way.

 

[reddishrecue]

I mean you could also not build campuses and neglect science as well, making your culture output stronger.
Another concept I've seen pop up is combining science and culture into a "knowledge" yield. I don't know if Civ would go in that direction but realistically it might make more sense in which libraries, academies, and universities etc. would help toward cultural advancement as well.

I've seen ai neglect science and go for culture and they actually get a culture win. I usually go for science but it's making me think twice about it because as soon as I had a bit of culture I get attacked.

 

[Naokaukodem]

- FOOD, as population sustentation and growth. The population consume each turn X amount of food and the surplur determines the rate of population increase. Deployed armies have a higger rate of comsumption. If food production is under consumption the population stop growing, lost bonus provided, immigrate to other civs and finally rebel.

- PRODUCTION, is your cities capacity to transform resources and turn them into infrastructure, vehicles, equipment and manufactured goods. So production come from your laborers and their efficiency is determined by their number, their satisfaction, your technologies, raw materials avaibility, industrial facilities and policies. So production is not "consumed" but "used" each turn (time) by a number of queues per city, this would help for a viable "tall gameplay" of efficient high production capacity cities.

- WEALTH, the true currency in-game, used as common unit to pay for most units and buildings, also to buy resources, territory, techs and others diplomatic actions like war reparations. Taxation, trade routes and corporations are the regular source of wealth, natural resources and manufactured goods are part of it but the number of the ones that gives you wealth directly should be limited (like precious metal mines and cash crops plantations).

- CULTURE, as a influence measurement, the appeal of your Ideologies with denizens (own and foreign) over the ideologies of others civs. This cover al ideological aspect of the game (heritage/religion/goverment) and comes from cultural products (Textiles, Ceramics, Jewelry, Movies, Cuisine, etc.), cultural buildings (included wonders), great people (and their Great Works), and expand through trade routes, religion, mass media and tourism.
New ideologies themselves are generated by "inspiration-like" mission that triggers decision events (with multiple options), then ideologies spread between denizens (these also have relevant value for diplomatic interactions).

- SCIENCE, is the progress that starts to be generated when each of your Research Lines is asigned with a project to develop a technology from the Tech-Tree, so the ammount of science is NOT spent by the new Technology researched, on the contrary the science is produced by the research and when finalized this amount is added to your global accumluated of science to achieve milestones that unlock additional Research Lines and allows to Advance Era.
You start with just one Research Line but later get more, and their projects are not only to investigate new techs from the Tech-Tree, but also Academic Grant (attract Great people like Scientists, Engineers, Philosophers and Artists), School Specialization (provide temporal bonus to certain areas like Agronomy to Food, Economy to Wealth, Theology to Religion,etc.) Selective Breeding (improve and/or create copies of crops and livestock resources) and build parts of the Science victory mechanism.

So we can see that each one has their own ways to be generated and applied, not just "mana" of different colors used in the same way.

Well that's a whole totally different perspective I was assuming in my original post. I was assuming that culture would still be a yield and science too. No wonder that I didn't get you.

 

[Krajzen]

To go away from offtopic and back to the OP, I think there is really no way to introduce some sort of rigorous criteria, because it all boils down to such intangible and controversial notions as nationality, identity, culture, continuity, civilization etc. This is simply not realm guided by logic, universal laws, generalizations across history, great theories etc. Perceptions shift and lines of division are fuzzy and everchanging.

Why do we even have to put the same framework on the entire world? I'd argue that in some cases it would totally make sense to use dynasties as civ basis and in some other cases - ethnicities, cultures or political entities. Because different cultures (whatever that means ) defined their own identity in different ways. Greeks understood and understand who is 'us vs them' in a different way from Romans, Persians, Celts, Chinese, Jews etc. To uniformize all that you'd have to bend their own concepts of themselves into something artificial anyway.

If we go by ethnic groups we could make Tamerlane the leader of "Uzbek" civilization, but he wouldn't look at himself this way. On the other hand, Byzantium of Greek Christian Theodora is never going to be lumped togerher with pagan Latin Caesar as 'Rome' despite her own insistence on being 'Roman' (and Greek like Pericles!), so even the rule of self perception isn't consistent. Polish golden age is considered to have under Lithuanian dynasty, Saladin was Kurdish, but on the other hand foreign dynasty sometimes was very separated from subjects. And so on, and so on...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

To go away from offtopic and back to the OP, I think there is really no way to introduce some sort of rigorous criteria, because it all boils down to such intangible and controversial notions as nationality, identity, culture, continuity, civilization etc. This is simply not realm guided by logic, universal laws, generalizations across history, great theories etc. Perceptions shift and lines of division are fuzzy and everchanging.

Why do we even have to put the same framework on the entire world? I'd argue that in some cases it would totally make sense to use dynasties as civ basis and in some other cases - ethnicities, cultures or political entities. Because different cultures (whatever that means ) defined their own identity in different ways. Greeks understood and understand who is 'us vs them' in a different way from Romans, Persians, Celts, Chinese, Jews etc. To uniformize all that you'd have to bend their own concepts of themselves into something artificial anyway.

If we go by ethnic groups we could make Tamerlane the leader of "Uzbek" civilization, but he wouldn't look at himself this way. On the other hand, Byzantium of Greek Christian Theodora is never going to be lumped togerher with pagan Latin Caesar as 'Rome' despite her own insistence on being 'Roman' (and Greek like Pericles!), so even the rule of self perception isn't consistent. Polish golden age is considered to have under Lithuanian dynasty, Saladin was Kurdish, but on the other hand foreign dynasty sometimes was very separated from subjects. And so on, and so on...

To paraphrase Kipling:

"There are nine and twenty ways
of describing Tribal Ways
And each and every one of them is Right."

- And more important, a game with 29 different ways of describing the features of the population of each and every tile on the game map would be approaching Cray Supercomputer requirements, because each and every tile may change some part of those features every turn of the game for the first 200 - 300 turns.
Your list of candidates: Roman, Persian, Celt, Chinese, Jews is a good case in point: 'Roman' was a political describer in the Empire of Roman Citizenship regardless of ethnicity; 'Persian' for centuries was a thin ruling elite on top of a mass of peoples ranging from Greeks on the Anatolian coast to Egyptians to Phoenicians to Mesopotamian city dwellers to Afghan mountaineers - as ethnically and culturally disparate a group as can be imagined! 'Celts' in the Classical Era covered everything from the Irish and proto-Scots to tribes living along the Danube River, while 'Chinese' included numerous migrants off the high steppes as well as both wheat-eaters in northern China and rice-eaters in southern China: diet, village life, and ethnicity all included wild differences within a supposedly uniform population. And finally, 'Jews' is a religious descriptor having little or no ethnic component except in the idiotic definitions of fascists.

So right there, 5 different 'populations' would require 5 different definitions of types of differences among and between them. Now expand that to, as a minimum, over a hundred different Civilizations, City States, and 'less than City' groups on the map: tribal huts, barbarian camps, settlements, etc. and perhaps you begin to see the problems. Professional population geographers (of whom my sister is one) have filled volumes of books and notebooks trying to define populations and still cannot agree (according to her) on even the definitions of what precisely are the primary characteristics that differentiate among populations simply because there are so many different characteristics that can be identified.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Your list of candidates: Roman, Persian, Celt, Chinese, Jews is a good case in point: 'Roman' was a political describer in the Empire of Roman Citizenship regardless of ethnicity; 'Persian' for centuries was a thin ruling elite on top of a mass of peoples ranging from Greeks on the Anatolian coast to Egyptians to Phoenicians to Mesopotamian city dwellers to Afghan mountaineers - as ethnically and culturally disparate a group as can be imagined! 'Celts' in the Classical Era covered everything from the Irish and proto-Scots to tribes living along the Danube River, while 'Chinese' included numerous migrants off the high steppes as well as both wheat-eaters in northern China and rice-eaters in southern China: diet, village life, and ethnicity all included wild differences within a supposedly uniform population. And finally, 'Jews' is a religious descriptor having little or no ethnic component except in the idiotic definitions of fascists.

Well we can take a different perspective for examples like Persia. Empires like Achaemenid as a product were diverse but the core that build it was Persian, then in game you play also as a Persian core with uniques (units, buildings, abilities) that facilitate to recreate the conquest and control of sizable foreign territories and populations, so things like Satrapies are part of this general design.
I mean a civ like base England strongly designed around the British Golden Age would not have Indian cities and uniques just because they controled it, right?

Add ethno-cultural identity to game also allows to have civs with design that can exploit such mechanics like:
- Persia as a conquer and administre a diverse empire, civ.
- America as a attract and integrate immigration, civ.
- India as a civ that can found cities from a set of different own cultures instead of just one, civ.
- Spain (or Arabia) as a religion+cultural conversion of conquests, civ.

As a whole the lack of big maps and more numeous and significative "minor civs" take away the chance for interesting real-history based gameplay design around the administration of foreign/diverse populations and legacies.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

In creating this thread, one of my primary motives was to carve out some general schema for the mapping of historical states and peoples to in-game factions that would allow a greater degree of representation ; not just for peoples, but for certain states that don't seem to fit in with the current s/p-to-civ mapping convention.

For example, the Ottomans are the Turkish civ in the game. But there have historically been many other important Turkish states in history, most notably the early Turkic Khaganates, the Seljuqs, the Tatar states etc. And because post-Khaganate Turkish history is inextricably linked with Persian, there are also other states similarly limited by the existence of the Persian and Ottoman civs: Ilkhanate (also related to Mongolia), the Ghaznavids, the Ghurids, the Khwarezmian, the Uzbek and Kazakh khanates, the Emirate of Bukhara, the Karakhanids... all these states just get elbowed out of the candidature due to the current restrictive schema.

Consider as an example the Ilkhanate. One might riposte that there already is a Mongolian civ in the game, but I would reply that the Ilkhanate is not satisfactorily represented by that faction. The same riposter (after the dogged, straightforward fashion of riposters) would then point to the Persian civ, but I could also point out that the Persian civ does not satisfactorily represent the Ilkhanate either (and has precious little room to do so either, considering it has to include Achaemenid, Sassanian, Safavid and Afsharid elements at the same time).

Now, the Ilkhanate might not be a high-priority civ for many, but I chose it as an example to illustrate the problems arising due to the exclusionary nature of the way civs are represented in the game. I am looking for a solution so that there is more room for states like the Ilkhanate to have at least a chance to get into the game.

 

[Evie]

I get the sentiment, but a core problem remains limited space. If we decide to have an additional Turkish civilization, or the Ilkhanate - both worthy causes! - they come at the cost of another civ that is likely also not an European civ (because as much as we can theorize about removing those in theoretical terms, it's a pipe dream in practice).

There's a lot of zero-sum game to all this as a result: for any representation we gain in one place we lose a similar amount elsewhere, and with Europe being the PR magnet it is, it's more often than not representation in one place we care about at the expanse of another we also care about.

So knowing when not to represent is as important to achieving the best representation possible as knowing what is worthy of representation. The Ilkhanate would be great, and are poorly represented by existing civs, but are they worth losing out on a civ in Africa or the Americas (indigenous)? That's a whole other question. And the answer to it will often tske the form of "with the limited number of tags we have, we should probably let the mongols represent the ilkhanate."

Even if that representation is bad and, in a vacuum, we could justify the ilkhanate as its own civ.

 

[pineappledan]

The solution in that case would be to have as many civs as is necessary to portray everyone that you think is important. You start with the must-haves like Egypt and then china… and Persia, and Mongolia… and, and, and you keep going until you get to the Ilkhanate. Based on your previous statements I would guess you would prioritize a 2nd Turkic and a 2nd Persian civ before you reach the Ilkhanate, so I’m guessing you will wind up with at least 75 civs before you reach them.

The only way I could see them getting some higher priority is if you had a Gameplay reason to add the Ilkhanate specifically. Like maybe you came up with a really cool and thematic unique ability for the Ilkhanate, and it wouldn’t be appropriate on some other civ that would normally take higher cultural priority.

P.S. personally, I think the Yuan and the Golden Horde would both be a higher priority to include in some way over the Ilkhanate, but different strokes I guess.