New civ : Australia

I'd dislike Italy as civilization. Both Italy and Germany only became single countries in the 19th century, but where Germany has seen rulers before (both as Holy Roman Emperors and simply as Prussia when they got more powerful) as well as waged quite a few wars since then (French-German war of 1870-71, WW1, WW2) and has gone on to become one of the central countries in the EU, Italy was a much looser patchwork of city states. Imo it just makes more sense that there's some four or five Italian city states than that there's an Italian civilization. Also, it would cause naming problems, as for both Italy and the Roman Empire it's very clear that Rome should be the capital, whereas with some other civlizations (Greece, Germany, Russia, etc) you could point to other cities too.
Valid points, I guess a renaissance Northern-Italy civ would make more sense in that regard (as long as its not like Venice 2.0 :p )

Also, dont forget there was both Germany and the HRE in civ4! :D
 
I'd dislike Italy as civilization. Both Italy and Germany only became single countries in the 19th century, but where Germany has seen rulers before (both as Holy Roman Emperors and simply as Prussia when they got more powerful) as well as waged quite a few wars since then (French-German war of 1870-71, WW1, WW2) and has gone on to become one of the central countries in the EU, Italy was a much looser patchwork of city states. Imo it just makes more sense that there's some four or five Italian city states than that there's an Italian civilization. Also, it would cause naming problems, as for both Italy and the Roman Empire it's very clear that Rome should be the capital, whereas with some other civlizations (Greece, Germany, Russia, etc) you could point to other cities too.
you should come to the thread talking about Italy as a civilization if you want to continue this discussion, I think this isn't the right place if you want to talk about this.
 
I'm definitely not anti-modern nations, even if it does strike a bit as target market pandering, but I hope they get this phase out of the way with DLC packs and hand the reigns of the franchise over to someone other than Ed Beach. From my understanding, he is a freak about European history and its starting to reflect too strongly in the balance of Civs. If they replace him with a different director for expansions, I hope its someone dedicated to diversifying the options and not another guy from a privileged demographic pushing out the same stuff. The fact that Australia and Brazil come out before Persia, Inca, Maya, Mongolia, Khmer, Thai, Mali, Ethiopia, any number of other African civs, any number of native North American, just screams....whiteness. I expect more

To be fair, I do think we needed a colonial south-american civ. I just wished it was Gran Colombia instead of Brazil.


Something to consider is that they may be saving the more ancient/pre-colonial Civs for an expansion pack and releasing the popular "novelty" Civs as DLC. It could very well just be marketing strategy. I very much doubt we'll have the first expansion pack and not see some of the other Civs that have been important set pieces in past Civs like the Maya, the Inca, Persia, Mongolia, etc. included.

Figured the same thing. The expansion will probably be heavy on acient civs, I'd even wager focusing more on Asia.
 
Last edited:
When I first saw this thread title, I ignored it thinking it was someone's proposal for a new civ. Then my phone got a notification from the Civ youtube channel and I did a double-take.

Yes, i thought that too. I never expected this. Really unexpected. But okay, right now the gameplay and AI is not good and I will be happy if they can fix that or make it better.

And I hope they will include at some point:
Ottomans
Persia
Inca and/or mayan
Netherlands/Austria
more eastern asia civs (korea, siam)
mongolia
babylon
Variation in leaders (usa, china, japan, isabella, russia, france and rome)
 
Last edited:
Valid points, I guess a renaissance Northern-Italy civ would make more sense in that regard (as long as its not like Venice 2.0 :p )

Also, dont forget there was both Germany and the HRE in civ4! :D

I'd say there's a difference between the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded (quite clearly the focus of Civ 4) and the Holy Roman Empire that continued afterwards (and of which Frederick Barbarossa is a leader), as that second HRE had far less power, sometimes even in name only.
 
Interesting. I assume they're saving the missing "core" civs for the first full expansion. So don't expect to get Persia, Mongols, or Inca until then.
 
Now that we've all agreed that Austrailia is in here because the community requested it as opposed to their historical contributions, and that depending on your point of view, this is either ok or the worst thing Firaxis could possibly do...

Lets discuss gameplay! Austrailia's abilities give it some interesting motivations other civs don't have. First of all, a city on a costal tile gives +8 housing, which is huge, and probably the best part of their ability. Yes, its fewer tiles to work, but it means you can delay getting housing for much longer than other civs. How can Australia abuse this advantage to get ahead in other ways? I'm torn. On one hand, you don't need to build as many farms for housing purposes, which means you can build your districts earlier and get bonuses from them sooner, without sacrificing growth or hitting the housing limit! On the other hand, you could also build farms to grow your cities huge early without being restricted by growth. I'm not sure what the best balance will be.

I feel like the harbor district is surprisingly not going to be a huge priority for Australia. You'll eventually get the adjacency bonus for them when you put it next to your commercial hubs, but the rest of the bonuses a harbor provides are pretty minimal for them. The housing provided by harbor buildings aren't going to be very important, and you can already build ships from the start since you'll want cities by the coast. Eventually, you'll probably want them for the trade route, but that's about it. Commercial districts, on the other hand, will be great.

The outback station seems pretty good, and is definitely one of the best unique tiles, but it will be interesting to see how many places you can spam them, considering the relatively late place they come in the tech tree, and the fact that your cities will be primarily costal. It probably won't be a game changer.

The digger will be almost useless unless its bonuses are huge. It's both an infantry unit and its late in the game, which is not a good combination for a UU.

Citadel of Civilization sounds situationally great, thats a pretty huge production bonus. In single player it means you have a pretty big incentive to be the world police while annoying everyone. If Austrailia becomes a top civ in MP, it will be because everyone is too afraid to go to war with them.

No unique district hurts them in terms of civ tiering, so I'd say this is probably a middle of the road civ, but it will be interesting to see how these bonuses work out. I could be wrong.

Australia's Campuses, Holy Sites, and Commercial hubs are going to tend to have more yields simply because you're likely to put them places which have high appeal anyway, namely along mountains, rivers, and forests. On top of that, coasts also have higher appeal, and since you're building on the coast for the housing bonus, you can build districts along the coast too for higher yields.
 
I'd say there's a difference between the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded (quite clearly the focus of Civ 4) and the Holy Roman Empire that continued afterwards (and of which Frederick Barbarossa is a leader), as that second HRE had far less power, sometimes even in name only.

I disagree, the UU and UB of the HRE in civ4 were clearly medieval/renaissance (and the units were speaking Low German, a north German dialect, that originated from the Old Saxon, not Old Franconian, language), opposed to the leaderhead being early medieval (and Franconian).
 
Oh, by the way, does anyone know how long after announcement it took for Poland to be avaliable?
 
Wut?

I appreciate what Firaxis are trying to do here. They want TSL representation, they said they'd do that with DLC from the start. They want to give players the countries they want, there's always been a small but sizeable crowd asking for Oz.

There is virtually no argument to say this is a money move though, as Oz players will already be playing civ, probably identifying as british for the purposes of the game, or choosing their fave empire gameplay or flavour wise like everyone else. I cannot see an Oz civ at this point adding any noticeable size to the Oz player base.

Gameplay wise, this isn't a particularly unique civ either. All the bonuses are more or less seen elsewhere, or could be applied to other civs just as easily. So what value does this add when they could give the community what it's actually been asking for like Persia?

I like Australia, and i think i'll like playing it enough, my favourite part about them is already their soundtrack. But I feel like Firaxis are stuck in a severely backward working culture that is so reactive they are responding to demands on CiV and applying them to CVI.

What this choice is is bland. If they want TSL, they should go all in and do it properly with different cultures and really different mechanics alongside that change the way you play, like they did with the Aztecs.

/rant XD
 
Poor choice.Civs should have some sort of relevance to history in their time.Austrailia has none in this time frame.
 


*Runs from the hordes of angry CFC users*
 
Last edited:
Anyway, thoughts on John Curtin's agenda:

I think he will like civs that are at war with civs that declared war on him.
 
Look, I'll say this - By and large Civ is a franchise, and as such a franchise needs staples. These staples like Rome, China, England, and America (and other well rounded historical heavyweights) are the types of Civs that boost the franchise in terms of legitimacy. No matter what, we're always going to have these staples of Civilization. The question that comes next is - what do we do with the remaining civs? Do we only include these well known gargantuans of history? It's worth looking at how Firaxis has historically operated.

Recently, Firaxis has been taking strides towards catering towards specific markets. When BNW was announced, and that Brazil was an inclusion - many in the community were shocked - angry even. Since then, Brazil has been included in Beyond Earth and in Civ VI. Poland is another example of a specific market. With the inclusion of Australia as a DLC, we can assume that this is another specific market that they're catering towards. We can probably assume that Canada is to be included at some time within the lifespan of Civ VI. Portugal is also included in this to a certain extent.

So with Poland, Brazil, Australia, and Canada out of the way - this leaves us with our remaining civs. Of course, we can assume that the heavyweights will return in the future - but there are quite a few slots available that allow Firaxis to get away with some pretty interesting choices. In Civ V, these 'interesting choices' were notably Venice and Shoshone, the inclusion of which shocked many in the community (again). These civs (alongside Brazil) are now relatively normalised, and the interesting byproduct is that suddenly, because these Civs were placed up against heavyweights like Arabia and India - people are suddenly taking these cultures a lot more seriously. It's interesting the impact that video games can have in this regard.

Heavyweights will always exist. Specific civs that cater to demographics will always exist. Civ is an investment really, and you'll just have to trust that the end lineup will be well rounded.
 
Not what I would have picked, but a new civ is better than none. I already have an idea on how I will be updating their ability sets for the Combined Tweaks mod.
 
Australia combined with the Auckland CS could be interesting. The increased housing from Australia and production from Auckland could make island cities a lot more viable. Viable enough though, not sure? Also, do they make it clear if you can build the Outback Outpost on top of Cattle/Sheep and retain the bonus resource?
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom