Multiple Leaders As Solution To Representational Gaps/Balkanization

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

For someone like myself, who makes a big distinction between a country and a civilization. This:

A civilization to me, is the broadest possible grouping of all peoples that have a common origin, culture and cultural practices, religion, ethnicity, traditions, etc.
That means individual nations, kingdoms, republics, etc. what have you, can belong to these civilizations while existing with other polities of the same civilization.

You can find all of that between Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.
And yes, I'm not dumb, I know there are differences, but in a bigger scheme,
those differences are far less pronounced than say the difference between the Aztecs and the Russians.
That's why we have things like the Warring States period or the Greek city-states.
Civilizations can be in a state of being where they have multiple members belonging to itself.
Sparta was extremely different from Athens. Yet they were both considered part of the Greek civilization, and this stems from culture, ethnicity, traditions, religion, etc. that you can trace a common origin to. If you look at China, Persia or any other civilization, you can identify an origin point, and trace a line through their development even as those people change, they stay cohesive even during periods where they've broken up into multiple countries or reunite into a new polity. In the same vein, you can look at civs like Sumer or Egypt and identify where those civilizations end.

When I say Iceland is not a civilization, I don't mean it in spite or malice, or to say Icelanders are uncivilized. I say it to mean that Iceland itself is not distinct as a civilization, and instead belongs to the broader Scandinavian one.

Would be my definition of a civilization.
A country can be part of a civilization, but just because a country is a country, does not automatically mean it is its own civilization.
This seems to be the case to me with the inclusion of Norway, in lieu of the classic Viking civ (I know now the name is wrong, but the spirit is not) that appeared in Civs 2, 3 & 4.
It's likely too late, and they're probably not going to change Norway for two reasons specifically:
1) They set the precedent with Denmark and Sweden in Civ 5 and they're committed on this decision
2) Civ6 is close to Gold and ready to be shipped to stores/pre-loaded

If Firaxis had used your definition of civilizations they would have struggled finding enough civilizations people know about to fill their game, especially from Europe since most civ 6 civs from Europe are modern countries and not "true" civs.

Take USA for example. USA is not a civilization according to your term. Maybe the Indians were, but USA today is a conglomerate of all the immigrants from Europe and slaves from Africa. Austria, Netherlands, Germany, France, England etc. are all part of the same kind of civilization with lots of common ancestry. Maybe we could have used Germanic or Latin civs if we had followed your definition. However, players won't get attached to the Germanic civ. They can get attached to Germany, Austria etc.

For Europe I do agree that my definition doesn't quite work as well, but there should be a baseline where we don't get too much overlap. What I want is moderation on the spectrum.
I don't want to see Germany split into Ulm, Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, etc.
On the other hand, the Germanic civilization is perhaps too broad.
Something as simple and granular as there being just Germany and Austria is perfect for me.
But definitely no to Germany and the HRE. And to me, Norway, Sweden, Denmark approach the first level of balkanization; too much.

But I understand the reasoning.
Having a Pan-Slavic civ would not work for a myriad of reasons that we probably shouldn't get into in this thread.
And Celts should emphatically be split up by region; I even suggested a split between Continental and Insular Celts in another thread.

But for everyone who had been equating my argument about a Pan-Scandinavia civ to the Civ4 Native America civ; that's apples and oranges.
There are huge, huge differences between the Navajo, to the members of the Iroquois, to the Sioux, to any other tribe you can think of.
Comparatively, as evidenced in the Norway thread, at least Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can somewhat understand each other with a common origin in the languages.
They are not in the same tier of "blob civ".
Not in the slightest.

But what this would mean is that we need some way to show different facets of a civilization for different styles of polities, eras, periods or like in the case of Scandinavia, multiple leaders from all of the kingdoms belonging to the Scandinavian civ.

Which brings me to an elegant solution and one that we'll likely see implemented by the devs for existing civilizations in expansions and DLCs:

That's why I think the way they do it with greece in CiVI os the best way, to have the nation name of the civ attached to the leader, so the civ is Greece, but it's called Sparta or Athens depending on the leader.
In the same way a DLC leader for Norway could be Gustavus Adolphus and change the country to Sweden while the civ stay scandinavia.

This is so much more elegant. Especially now that we have Greece getting different capitals depending on whether you have Pericles or Gorgo.
(If Greece is actually split into an "Athens" and "Sparta" "civ", I think my head might explode)
This is one of the primary reasons why I think we shouldn't see so many inclusions of subsets of civilizations.
You can portray every aspect or side of a civ just by switching the leader.

Some of you have leaders that you don't like for one reason or another as opposed to myself and my distaste for the specific choice of "civ".
Count yourself lucky, because multiple leaders can serve as a panacea for that.

So what specialties/aspects do you think are lacking from certain civs,
and what kind of additional leader would you place to cover that gap?

For China, I'd add Tang Taizong, for an offensive, assimilationist China that is rarely depicted.
Instead of the Builder bonus, he'd get reduced costs or speed bonuses towards being the Suzerain of city-states
along with a land combat bonus against anyone who is in a war with a city-state or a civ you have good relations with.

I like Tomyris. A lot.
But there's a lot of people claiming a difference between the Massagetae and the Scythians
(numerous sources however, say the Massagetae originate from the Scythians).
I mean, you could add Skilurus and assign him a trade related UA.

So let's hear it. What gaps do you see in the civs and who would you add to fill them?

 

[nunor]

I'd just like to say I'm on your side about the concept/scope of "civilization" that should be considered for this game series.

I'm already on the fence about Byzantium, and then I see people saying "I'd really like to see Sparta, Macedonia and Athens as different civs!" It makes me want to pull my hair off. This is not Total War, guys!

I think multiple leaders are a perfect solution to represent different periods/poles of the same civilization. So for India you could still have Gandhi (ugh) and add Ashoka or Chandragupta Maurya, for example.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I see it working a few ways
1. Differences in "country" within civ (sparta v. athens key example)
2. Differences in "era" for a civ with long time of impact (Cleo -classical egypt trades with great powers, Ramses-ancient egypt is a great power, Saladin-medieval egypt is part of the islamic world)
3. Best is when there is a combo between those two (India, Scandanavia, Germany cultural groups where different countries are dominant in different eras)

I'd also really like to see some "multiciv leaders"

Byzantine leader of either Rome or Greece
Charlemagne leader of France or Germany
Saladin for Arabia or Egypt

To help get multiple civs in that aren't too different.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I'd just like to say I'm on your side about the concept/scope of "civilization" that should be considered for this game series.

I'm already on the fence about Byzantium, and then I see people saying "I'd really like to see Sparta, Macedonia and Athens as different civs!" It makes me want to pull my hair off. This is not Total War, guys!

I think multiple leaders are a perfect solution to represent different periods/poles of the same civilization. So for India you could still have Gandhi (ugh) and add Ashoka or Chandragupta Maurya, for example.

Thanks

But yeah, with India that's a good example.
I'd love to have Chandragupta Maurya for a proper military-based India.

I see it working a few ways
1. Differences in "country" within civ (sparta v. athens key example)
2. Differences in "era" for a civ with long time of impact (Cleo -classical egypt trades with great powers, Ramses-ancient egypt is a great power, Saladin-medieval egypt is part of the islamic world)
3. Best is when there is a combo between those two (India, Scandanavia, Germany cultural groups where different countries are dominant in different eras)

I'd also really like to see some "multiciv leaders"

Byzantine leader of either Rome or Greece
Charlemagne leader of France or Germany
Saladin for Arabia or Egypt

To help get multiple civs in that aren't too different.

Multi-civ leaders would be a novel new concept I could actually get behind.
Has it been confirmed that Unrestricted Leaders may be an option again though?
If so, then we can already do this with Saladin then.