Yes to the Shire being a civ.
Yes to a goal of 16 civs.
Yes to three Elvish civs. It's a nice arithmetic mean in-between two and four, after all.
I like mrtn's idea about having an "Orcs & friends" civ in addition to Mordor and the bad-mannish civs.
Originally posted by SoCalian
Angmar might be to[o] powerful, you could use the same arguments against Angband as were used against Valinor.
Yes, the same arguments can be used against Ang
band that are used against Valinor. That is why we shouldn't have Ang
band as a civ. But if we want to talk Ang
mar, though, then we are in a much better ball-game. The locale of Angmar (early Third Age) and the relatively independent Misty Mountain Orcs (memorably present in the later Third Age tale of
the Hobbit) virtually overlap, suggesting that we represent the two as a single, bad, civ. The Trollshaws were right nearby, and the Barrow-wights were planted by Angmar. That gives us plenty of bad-guy units (misty mountain orcs, trolls and barrow-wights) for this bad-guy civ -- if we need em, anyhow (i.e., I'm not sure how to use a barrow-wight in game, nor clear if that would be a tad un-kosher). Ang
mar would be ruled by the chief Nazgûl, not one of the Valar, which might indicate why the With-king's political entity was only able to defeat the kingdom of Arnor
after it was split by sibling rivalry, and end up being crushed by an army of Gondor. Doesn't sound too powerful to me.
Originally posted by mrtn
We have a bunch of names that are duplicates (like Moria and Khazad Dûm). Should we use duplicates as city names? Some of you probably think this is horrible, but it would double the names available.
We also have a bunch of names that actually are names of places where dwarves lived, but aren't cities, in the strict sense. These include Iron Hills and the Grey Mountains. Should we used these places as city names?
Please answer these two questions. 
Yes to both questions!
Originally posted by SoCalian
Now, the only problem I have is what Elven civs we should use. I personaly think that we should use Noldor(Beleriand), Sindar(Beleriand), and Lorien. These are the best canditates for the three Elven civs, because they are the three most powerful Elven nations. If you try to argue that the Noldor and Sindar are the same because they are both Eldar, you are deeply flawed in you arguments. That is like trying to say that the English and French are the same because they are both European. No one would ever argue that. There was bad blood beween the Noldor and the Sindar, just as there is bad blood between the English and the French. Consider for a moment, how much Thingol, the king of the Sindar, hated the House of Feanor (Noldor). his hatred was so much that often times when the Noldor requseted aid in assaulting their common foe Morgoth, he would often refuse. If you say that by this logic, Lorien should not be included, you are wrong. Take a look at Canada and the USA. In both nations, peoples of both English and French decent live harmoniously. The same is true with Lorien, Noldor and Sindar live harmoniously together to for their own new empire. Lorien at its height could compeate with the best of them. and at the height of it's land size (imediatly after the War of the Ring) it was as large if not larger than Rohan. So, as I see it, the best elven Civs are: Noldor, Sindar, Lorien. Oh, and all are easy to get leaders great leaders, and city lists for.
Do note that the suggestion of uniting the Calaquendi into a single civ was made only in respect to having
two Elvish civs,
not three as we're assuming now. So your worries are ill-founded there.
Besides, it's not quite fair to compare the Noldor and the Sindar to the French and the English, due to the scale we are working with here. We are trying to distill all the Elves into three "civilisations." Imagine if you were trying to mod RL human history and had to squeeze all the Caucasians or Europeans into three civs. You might just have to put France and England together, maybe along the lines of Latin, Germanic and Slavic culture groups. It really is a shame, though, that our beloved game cannot represent factional infighting very well. Assuming a threefold representation of Elves, then yes, the first civ would be the Noldor (who pretty much disappeared after the First Age), and the Sindar (who pretty much accounted for the population of the Elvish realms of the Second Age, albeit ruled by a Noldor or two).
But Lorien as the third civ? It was tiny, isolationist, and everyone lived in trees. The only "city" I can think of for your city list would be Cerin Amroth, which is really just a burial mound. Sounds like a rather uninteresting, weak one-city civ to me. I still stand by my suggestion for the third civilisation of Elves being the Moriquendi (we could just call them the Wood-Elves, if we wanted to be easy on the non-Tolkeeners), which would encapsulate the overwhelming majority of Elves that tarried in Middle-Earth -- the Nandor, the Silvan, and all other sorts of Avari. They comprised three considerable political presences of which I am aware, one of which was Lorien (the other two being Ossiriand and the realm of Thranduil). Going this route would give our third Elvish civ the breadth to span all three Ages of the Sun,
and even the Fourth (because Avari wouldn't have the suppressed desire to
return to Valinor -- they were never there). We would have a heck of a lot more place names to work with than if we narrowed ourselves down to just Lorien, that's for sure. We would not have a problem explaining where all the population was coming from, and not going away to. I imagine the units would ignore movement costs in forests, and would be highly-defensive, making it damn hard to invade a Wood-Elf "city," but preventing them from going on large-scale rampages typical of their Deep- and Grey-Elf cousins. The leader could be Celeborn, Thranduil or even Legolas (all Sindarin elves) for the Orlando fans. (Denethor, the first leader of the Elves of Ossiriand, would be better off as a great leader, given the potential confusion with the last Steward of Gondor.) Whatever. Lorien is just too narrow a choice.
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