New Civilizations

[CurtSibling]

I can't believe so many people post in these threads!

You can create you own CIVs, in-game!

Has anyone actually played CIV around here?

Micronesia or the city state of Danzig are not going to be represented as a CIV!

 

[danegeld]

I was talking about as an AI and without going to the CiV editor

I cant speak for others but i have been playing since Civ 1

 

[^_Joker_^]

I think before shouting names of civs in the room one should think about some rules which define what qualifies a civ to be really one in the game.

I think such civilisations should either

1. have been around for a very long period of time in different forms under different governments. (like Germany or France)

or

2. have had huge cultural influence in the past, being occupied or destroyed after that and maybe come back to history after a long time
(like Greece, after Alexander first under Roman, then Bycantine, then Ottoman rule)

3. be very young in history but have huge political impact nowadays
(like the USA, which would otherwise totally disqualify as a civilisation since they came into existence as a colony of mostly Europeans that made itself independent and former African slaves and having an "ancient" America in Civ always made me laugh a bit)

One also has to try not to put civilisations in which are more or less decendents or origins of other civilisations.
having Rome and Bycantine Empire around is already a problem since latter is just a part of the first, but the first existed at some point parallel to the latter so it is ok. But one can't but France, Germany, Netherland and the Francs together since the first 3 originate mostly in the Francs. Having the Kelts around is also a big problem those are more or less part of e.g. France now.. One must also try and not mix the Germanic people together with germany. Todays Germany is only part of the entire Germanic population. The rest is in England, Scandinavia, Netherlands and other places which have developed into totally seperate civilisations for a very long time already.
Same goes for Rome and Italy. Italy is by far not the same as Rome, but definately one of its descendants and they did never coexist in history.

I'd say by these rules, any of todays southamerican states are disqualified since they must either be regarded as european colonies or as descendants of former southamerican civilisations.
Same goes for all balcan states. They all have been under foreign rule for hundreds of years and didn't have any huge impact on the world despite preserving their own culture to a certain degree over history. Oceania is also ruled out since they just had no big impact on the world.
The African nations are a problem since most of them have been occupied by Europeans for a very long time.
All this doesn't mean that all these nations have no rich culture or something. From that standpoint the USA and today's Australia would be really on the loosing side when looking at their age.
It only means that their culture never had much of an impact on the rest of the world. The Roman, Greek cultures had huge impact on their neibours and former occupied nations.

All this is of course just my opinions.

Open for critics and suggestions.


A different thing that came to my mind while writing this is something that civ somehow lacked.. the ability of occupied nations or colonies to make themselves independent or the possibility of huge empires to split up into two or more seperate states.
If this could be implemented somehow then France could actually be occupied by the Romans and become independent again later.. and the USA could come into existence as a former lets say English colony, or Rome could really split into two and the Byzantine empire could be born.
Possibilities like these could make managing a huge empire even more of a challenge. Let's admit it.. as soon as you're big enough you don't really have much of a problem in civ. Having this would give it a new dimension. The bigger an empire the more likely the splitting up. The bigger your empire and the bigger the former culture of a "destroyed" civ the more likely the fight for indepence again.. like making a post-mortem city culture flipping possible, just in an improved way.

Opinions?

And another point would be.. more a diplomatic issue maybe but...
What about stuff like the Union of states.. what if the UN wasn't the only way of becoming a leader. Why can't just a few allied states decide to join under the player's rule while that doesn't mean a total victory yet. THis could enable a bunch of friendly diplomatic nations to keep up with a big militaristic nation...

 

[mitsho]

Well, you get into various topic. Let me begin at the backside with a few quick sentences:

1. Splitting of nations (Civil Wars, etc.) have been proposed already and discussed various times in other threads. It would make no sense to list up all the things there said in here.

2. The UN: It's the same thing as with splitting of nations: Other threads exist. But I personally do not approve of this idea. It's just too complicated I think.

3a. When we take your scheme as official to chose the civs, some 'civs' from South America do approve. Argentinia for example had a big impact in history (f.e. Falkland Wars), culture (f.e. Evita Perron aka Madonna... ), science (f.e. Che Guevara was Argentinian). Ok, these reasons are a bit obscure, but they certainly are as good as a nation as Portugal or the Netherlands, who also were chosen. Then we go with Brazil. I could again list many reasons, but I think you can imagine what I would write. Another last candidate from South America would be the Andes-states, the idea of Simon Bolivar. But I don't approve to this idea, because it would be ahistorical. Then, I haven't talked of cuba, ....

3b. Europe: What about the Magyars (maybe Austria-Hungary?) or Poland. I accept that you think Serbia isn't worth. But these two 'civs' are certainly worth including.

3c. Africa. What about South africa. No impact on history. I beg your pardon, they are equally important as the USA, just from a different point of view (apartheid, 'boers' (boer-wars), diamants, etc.). What about Mali, Songhai, Abyssinia. These were never occupied by Europeans. I could go on.

4. My two euro-cents to your scheme. It's a good one, but you gotta take the global view by chosing their importance. Imagine you were a trade in arabian Baghdad in the first half of the last millenium (1000-1500 AD). What would your point of view be? You would know less of America, but more of Africa and Asia than you do as a European.
The problem is that we get teached history from a Western point of view and therefore we are too much concentrated on this, and argumentations as yours above develop.

mfG mitsho

 

[danegeld]

someone mention Sparta yet? or minos?

while some might want there to be a certiria for being an offical civ in the game why not have a whole slew of minor civs with their own flavors and let the end user decide if they wish to play any of them or have the AI make use of them?

why not have a game where you can start in the industrial age with a north and south america?

why not have a game where you play some minor tribe and seee if you can make it a dominate one?

then again i like to read harry turtledove too much

 

[InvaderBG]

Absolutely not! Belgrade was not even the place when Serbians had their "Great State", but at that time it was not even called Serbia but Raska, and that state at the time covered areas that are now Kosovo, Macedonia (FYRO) and part of Greek Macedonia. But that kingdom didn't last too long... For the most of time South Slavs (including Serbs) were under foreign rule (Byzantine, Ottoman, Hungarian). Back to Belgrade - I think that Ottomans built a fort on the border with Hungaria (Danube) to protect thier border and then a settlement arose around the fort, but I may be wrong. It is also possible that Hungarians built that fort to protect the border from Ottomans. That period is bit murky because that was the age of the Ottoman penetration to the Central Europe. Anyway, South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Slovenians) have always been under foreign occupation, and they haven't contributed much to the human race to call them a distinct civ. Ah yes, Albanians havenothing to do with Slavs, they are totally different people in all senses ( I don't mean anything bad when saying this). All who want to know something more about the Balkan peoples (South Slavs) could read Noel Malcom's Brief Histories of Bosnia and Kosovo just to get an idea what was going on there. I read many books on this topic, and I must say that this guy was totally unbiased in his writing. Well, some may disagree with me especially the guy who raised the issue of Serbians in CIV 4, but that very guy has a WW2 war criminal Draza Mihailovic as his avatar http://forums.civfanatics.com/image...line=1098857402.

(Veze nemas)You need to read more books to able to talk about history, Belgrade was bulit by romans, it was called Singidunum.Draza Mihajlovic is not a war criminal, just because komunsit govermant declared him a war criminal doesnt mean he is one.

Serbia should be in Civ4, for example Nikola Tesla and Mihajlo Pupin are serbs, if you don't know who are these people then your history knowlage is very low.In WW1 and WW2 Serbia had a very important role.

PoZ

 

[klopolov]

Man, you guys are unbelievable!!! What started as another thread on which civs should be added/changed/deleted quickly turned into an ugly brawl and then into calling out as many names for ancient civs with a slight mixture of modern day countries... There was a great idea posted on this thread (which got lost rather quickly due to everybody's desire to get their favorites out there), the idea of being able to quickly create a civ to play for or against. To be able to customize the leaderhead, civ's name... Now that would make it educational if one would research a civ/country/citystate/whateveryouwanttocall it and put thatinto the game. You want Serbia? No problem! Name the civ Serbia, create a leaderhead, name him/her, add list of cities, choose UU (unless there are no more UUs) from various units, choose the UU's stats......... IMHO, that would be the optimal solution. If that doesn't work, with a little dedication and information from this very usefull site, you can learn to mod and create your own mod with your civs, UUs and so on...

Why is there a need to endlessly repeat the same civs over and over again? Sure America (as in USA) in 4000BC does not make sense, but neither do Aztecs in 2000 AD! Seriously, people, the idea of the game is to build a prosperous and advanced civ out of what you start with. The names are given to civs to distinguish them from each other and to make playing slightly more enjoyable by pretending that you can rewrite the history. Why argue who should be in the game and who shouldn't be? Disable the UUs and give your civ and your leaderhead a custom name and you have what you want!

Hope I don't offend anyone...

 

[Princeps]

Man, you guys are unbelievable!!! What started as another thread on which civs should be added/changed/deleted quickly turned into an ugly brawl and then into calling out as many names for ancient civs with a slight mixture of modern day countries... There was a great idea posted on this thread (which got lost rather quickly due to everybody's desire to get their favorites out there), the idea of being able to quickly create a civ to play for or against. To be able to customize the leaderhead, civ's name... Now that would make it educational if one would research a civ/country/citystate/whateveryouwanttocall it and put thatinto the game. You want Serbia? No problem! Name the civ Serbia, create a leaderhead, name him/her, add list of cities, choose UU (unless there are no more UUs) from various units, choose the UU's stats......... IMHO, that would be the optimal solution. If that doesn't work, with a little dedication and information from this very usefull site, you can learn to mod and create your own mod with your civs, UUs and so on...

Why is there a need to endlessly repeat the same civs over and over again? Sure America (as in USA) in 4000BC does not make sense, but neither do Aztecs in 2000 AD! Seriously, people, the idea of the game is to build a prosperous and advanced civ out of what you start with. The names are given to civs to distinguish them from each other and to make playing slightly more enjoyable by pretending that you can rewrite the history. Why argue who should be in the game and who shouldn't be? Disable the UUs and give your civ and your leaderhead a custom name and you have what you want!

Hope I don't offend anyone...

Amen!

( Ten limit )

 

[charlesolmsted]

I agree, what is needed is the ability to easily create new civilizations - without giving up any of the existing ones.