Okay, but seriously, what exactly IS a civilization?

[BackseatTyrant]

More precisely, where does one civilization end and another begin? I'm certain pretty much everyone here have at some point had a heated debate about this, including yours truly, but never in a thread specifically about this subject, which is why I'm creating one.

I could start off by listing some classic examples where this question arises:

• Byzantium. It was a Greek-speaking offshoot of the original Roman empire, occupying roughly the same territory as Ottoman Turkey later would.
• India. It wasn't an actual country until the 1940s, though the idea of a unified, independent India had existed for a few decades at that point. Before then and the British colonization, the subcontinent had a history of political borders as complex as almost all of Europe, what with all the different ethnicities living there. Should the different ethnicites be treated as separate civs, or is a unified India alone "enough" representation?
• Arabia. I've often seen it accused of being a blob civilization, though I honestly only think this is the case if it's meant to represent every single Arabic-speaking country at once; keep the city list confined to the Arabian Peninsula sans Oman & Yemen, and I feel the discussion could be different.
• Egypt. Should Pharaoic Egypt, Hellenistic Egypt and Islamic Egypt be treated as separate civilizations? Or would there be too much redundancy given the geographic overlap?
• Firaxis' absolutely braindead decision to include HRE as a separate civilization to Germany. Glad that only happened once.
• The equally braindead decision (on top of possibly racist?) to bunch up all North American tribes into one single state. What?
• The ever-ongoing debate about whether or not modern Italy should be its own playable civilization.
• The question of whether or not former colonies should be playable civs? Firaxis seems to have firmly landed on 'yes' since at least Civ V.

So with that out of the way, I think it might be worth asking: what should the criteria be for 'playable civilization'? Was the definition the series made way back in the first instalment the right idea? Should the US ever have been a separate civilization from England? If Arabia is a "blob civilization", why isn't China? Conversely, if all of China is one civ, why isn't all of Europe? How much do political/national borders in real life actually matter? Or is language a more important factor? Is religion a more important divider? Like, should there be a Catholic civilization that encompasses everything from Mexico to Poland to the Philippines? What matters most between nationalism and "historical accuracy" for the series?

EDIT: I feel like this video is a good starting point to work from:

 

[Civinator]

More precisely, where does one civilization end and another begin?

The answer is very simple, so it can be that you don´t like it. A civilization in this sense is a player in a game of the civ series. The civilization begins with its start in the game and it ends when it is eliminated or the game is finished.

As civilizations in the civilzation series are mostly high customizable, nearly everything can be a civilization, as long as it is a player in the civ game.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

This is a question we think about a lot, too. The word "civilization" itself is outdated and vague, but there are no good alternatives ("culture" is even more vague, "state" too specific).
We have civs that were not (often) politically unified - Pericles's Greece, Chandragupta's India, Six Sky's Maya. Civs that were culturally very similar to others (colonies, for instance). Civs that appear for just an instant (Gran Colombia), and civs that have claims to existing nearly forever (China). Do we "blob" civs like Greece or Maya or Gaul? Do we get hyper-specific (HRE)? Is Cleopatra's Egypt really a link to ancient Egypt? If Cleo, why not Saladin, or Nasser as an Egyptian leader? Where would Italy come in in a game that includes Rome? If Rome disqualifies Italy, why, then, do we have Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman civs? Why is Saladin, a Kurd, leading an Arab civ? Why do we not split Arabia into Abbasid, Umayyad, etc? We do a number of these things in different ways, and are bound to step on toes whichever way we go, but we are thinking about it. It's better, maybe, to take a fuzzier perspective on such things, because history doesn't give us a clear image. Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottomans seem very distinct from each other, despite all occupying Constantinople. One could make the case that existing blobs (India, for instance) could also be split with the same rationale, and there would indeed be a case to be made here. In each case, "what's fun" is the ultimate deciding question, along with constraints of time and work.

 

[Henri Christophe]

Civilization is the state who can win civilization games.

 

[UWHabs]

I think if you were starting from scratch, there might be some changes in how things were run. Maybe things would be a little more consistent between whether to use the blob civ, or split them out.

As Andrew says, most of it truly is probably decided based on what's fun, which is why you might have a unit, building, and leader who were each thousands of years apart. I think the reason India is India in-game is because that choice was made 30 years ago. The same reason why the Aztecs are a staple of the game, and every other pre-colonial new world Native power comes and goes. I do think at times if you try to dig too narrow into a specific rule or dynasty, while it can certainly be interesting and enlightening to discover about them, you are more likely to end up with, let's say, weird bonuses. Even a civ like Canada, which obviously is a large country with 150 years of history, the choice of unique unit is a policeman. Gran Colombia obviously did not exist for a long time, and so ends up being sort of like a blob civ of Latin America.

Does that mean those civs don't deserve to be in the game? No, not really. To me, the more the merrier. And I think on the whole, you can get the fun of playing an "underdog" in Georgia against a global power like China. I like having that mix around. I don't want to only have Arabia, India, China, etc... around, but I also don't want every ancient Italian city-state to be its own civ. Especially if the game is providing for animations, voices, etc... for each leader and you are roughly limited to 50 or so civs throughout history, you're always going to over-represent some parts and under-represent others.

 

[Leucarum]

I like the mix of 'qualifications' different entrants in the series have for being called civilizations. I know some people would prefer historical accuracy, no non-ancient civs, only civs which did stand the test of time, etc... But I like that you can explore some alt. history with the civ series without having to only use the main historical big boys...

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Personally, if I were to decide, ethno-linguistic and/or ethno-religious divides would take priority over which dynasty ruled what and when. I'm one of those people who think it's more important to cover the entire African continent than have three different variations of Greece or France. A while ago, I had compiled a shortlist of which 64 civilizations ought to be included before any others, trying my best to confine myself to civs that have already been featured in one way or another in the series:

• Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand)
• Anahuac (a more "accurate" name for the Aztec empire)
• Arabia (strictly confined to the modern day gulf nations sans Oman & Yemen)
• Assyria
• Australia
• Austria
• Babylon
• Brazil
• Byzantium (This one is honestly low on my priority list; it's only here because I know a lot of you are very into choral music and sports riots)
• Canada
• Carthage
• Colombia (I've honestly always found the 'Gran' part to be redundant)
• Denmark
• Egypt
• England
• Ethiopia
• France (which is called Gaul by the Greeks, btw)
• Georgia (or Sakartvelo, since there a bunch of other Georgia's across the globe it sometimes gets confused with)
• Germany (reminder that the HRE is referred to as the German-Roman Empire in a bunch of different languages)
• Greece or Macedon, not both at the same time
• Han China (China is a big country with lots of different ethnicities, so let's maybe start off with only the ruling class ethnicity, so that e.g. Manchuria or Tibet can be added later with relatively less controversy)
• Hatti
• Haudenosuanne (more accurate name for the Iroquois nation)
• Hawai'i
• Hindustan (Roughly the same deal as with China; rename 'India' to 'Hindustan' and confine the city list to the area immediately surrounding and including Delhi, leaving Dravidian and other Indo-Aryan civs for another day)
• Hungary
• Hunnic Empire (This one is honestly on thin ice, since I could never find a name for which the Huns themselves would call their country, which unsurprising, given how the nation-state as a concept wouldn't exist until a millenium after they had all basically perished)
• Ireland (come on Gráinne Mhaul, Pirate Queen of Ireland! *crosses fingers*)
• Japan
• Java (most pre-colonial empires in Indonesia, most notably Majapahit, came specifically from this island)
• Kambuja
• Kongo
• Korea
• Lakota (or whatever other name better fits the entirety of the Sioux nation)
• Mali
• Maya civilization (honestly in the same position as the Huns, except they were allegedly never all that unified, but it would just feel 'wrong' to not include them)
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Nehiyaw (what the Cree call their own nation)
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Nubia (or Kush, honeslty, given how Nubia wasn't all that separate or distinct form Egypt)
• Persia
• Phoenicia
• Poland
• Portugal
• Rome
• Russia
• Scotland
• Scythia
• Shoshone
• Songhai
• Spain
• Sumer
• Sweden
• Tawantinsuyu (a more accurate name for the Inca empire)
• Thailand
• Turkey (always preferred this name over 'Ottoman Empire')
• United States (America is a continent)
• Ukraine
• Venice
• Vietnam
• Wallumapu (I've heard this be a more accurate name for the Mapuche nation)
• Zululand

This is obviously an incomplete and unfinished list. I would probably get rid of Byzantium and the Huns, in favour of Cherokee and Haiti. In general, I do feel there's a need for a collection of civs that can more evenly cover a True Start map, and just in general provide a more diverse representation.

That does bring me to another point: Sid Meier's Civilization is not about history unlike the board game, never has been. It has always been about nationalism. Therefore, when asking what civilizations to include, it might be good to take a look at what historical imageries all the different nationalist movements around the world are using, and more importantly, by which nationalist movements. For example, I've always seen Babylon as the game's equivalent of Iraq, since Iraqi nationalists tend to cling onto Babylonian imageries more than they do to the accomplishments of medieval Baghdad.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Lately civilizations are alternative accessories for disney characters.

 

[Starina]

Ukraine

Do you mean Kievan Rus? Answering the author's question, naturally there is no clear boundary of the transformation from Rus to the Tsardom of Russia, but apparently this happened in the XIV century. And of course, I would really like to see in the game and Kievan Rus, led by Vladimir or Olga, the Tsardom of Ivan the Terrible, the Empire and the USSR, led by you know who. But it's too fat and impossible ))

Moderator Action: Beware bringing the Russia/Ukraine conflict into the game threads. Nothing will get you booted faster than if I see it again. leif
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Abaxial]

Simply, in the context of Civ 6, they are players. Trying to decide if tribe A is a civilisation and tribe B is not, is something for anthropologists. Here it is irrelevant.

 

[Krajzen]

OP didn't mention one more very important source of arguments in this regard: "civilization" originally meaning not just any society or ethnic group, but one with a particular degree of high social complexity. To quote Wikipedia, because I am lazy,

Spoiler :

Now this is mere wikipedia, but the notion of "civilization" is fairly well established in historical sciences, and obviously central to this game series (good luck entirely handwaving it and saying it doesn't matter if it's literally in the name). And yet, it is very clear that we do get cultures which do not, in any way, classify under any definition of "civilization" bound to aforementioned notions - most notably several American Indian groups, Maori and Huns. The interesting turn of this situation was protest of some Cree chief over depiction of Cree in civ6 as land - grabbing, expansionist, resource - exploitng state. Interesting because Western people feel it is appropriate and morally correct move to depict Amerindian cultures as "just like us" to make up Western guilt over colonialism, but you can also perceive it not so positively, as molding those Amerindian tribal societies into European (Eurasian?) patterns of culture, development, history; ultimately turning them into something they have never been. And in the same time you simply can't avoid doing that and somehow make let's say tribal nomadic Comanche way of life capable of matching Roman Empire power levels if we are going for any plausibility; Comanche have to cease living like Comanche and start living like Neolithic Middle East for them to make any sense in a game like this.

This problem being so fiery is of course to a large degree result of scientific terminology attempting to objectively (?) judge social complexity being conflated with racist suprematist nomenclature since pretty much forever, with the notion of "civilized" people being framed superior, smarter, more human, more cultured (whatever that means) than "savage" people, which messes up everything, because it is increasingly uncomfortable to call pretty much any culture "not a civilization" due to its racist suggestions, and in the same time some sort of linguistic distinctions between different "tiers" of social organization are necessary. I also strongly suggest that any attempt to replace the word "civilization" with something else would end up similarly to this interesting linguistic phenomenon of each and every new "neutral, scientific, non offensive" term for people with below average IQ inevitably ending up as an insult and being replaced with next one ad infinitum.

Thereby, my post offers no answers, merely questions. Be my guest!

 

[BuchiTaton]

Now this is mere wikipedia, but the notion of "civilization" is fairly well established in historical sciences, and obviously central to this game series (good luck entirely handwaving it and saying it doesn't matter if it's literally in the name). And yet, it is very clear that we do get cultures which do not, in any way, classify under any definition of "civilization" bound to aforementioned notions - most notably several American Indian groups, Maori and Huns. The interesting turn of this situation was protest of some Cree chief over depiction of Cree in civ6 as land - grabbing, expansionist, resource - exploitng state. Interesting because Western people feel it is appropriate and morally correct move to depict Amerindian cultures as "just like us" to make up Western guilt over colonialism, but you can also perceive it not so positively, as molding those Amerindian tribal societies into European (Eurasian?) patterns of culture, development, history; ultimately turning them into something they have never been. And in the same time you simply can't avoid doing that and somehow make let's say tribal nomadic Comanche way of life capable of matching Roman Empire power levels if we are going for any plausibility; Comanche have to cease living like Comanche and start living like Neolithic Middle East for them to make any sense in a game like this.

This problem being so fiery is of course to a large degree result of scientific terminology attempting to objectively (?) judge social complexity being conflated with racist suprematist nomenclature since pretty much forever, with the notion of "civilized" people being framed superior, smarter, more human, more cultured (whatever that means) than "savage" people, which messes up everything, because it is increasingly uncomfortable to call pretty much any culture "not a civilization" due to its racist suggestions, and in the same time some sort of linguistic distinctions between different "tiers" of social organization are necessary. I also strongly suggest that any attempt to replace the word "civilization" with something else would end up similarly to this interesting linguistic phenomenon of each and every new "neutral, scientific, non offensive" term for people with below average IQ inevitably ending up as an insult and being replaced with next one ad infinitum.

Another point is differentiate between "civilization" and "civilized". Civilization is mainly used for broad groups of peoples and states, that is why in books we find Mesopotamian, Andean, Indian and Western civilizations NOT Scotish or Australian "civilizations". It is an absurd that in-game there are the same level of disparity between the design of Canada and England than between Canada to Vietnam when its pretty obvious the close relation between the former as part of the Western civilization.

The examples of Shoshone and Cree (also Lakota and Haudenosaunee in AoE3) are a call for more consistency in the selection of playable civs. Actualy centralized, urban and imperialistic states fit the objetive of the game, anything else is material for non playable "minor nations" (city-states and barbarians*).

 

[Henri Christophe]

Personally, if I were to decide, ethno-linguistic and/or ethno-religious divides would take priority over which dynasty ruled what and when. I'm one of those people who think it's more important to cover the entire African continent than have three different variations of Greece or France. A while ago, I had compiled a shortlist of which 64 civilizations ought to be included before any others, trying my best to confine myself to civs that have already been featured in one way or another in the series:

• Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand)
• Anahuac (a more "accurate" name for the Aztec empire)
• Arabia (strictly confined to the modern day gulf nations sans Oman & Yemen)
• Assyria
• Australia
• Austria
• Babylon
• Brazil
• Byzantium (This one is honestly low on my priority list; it's only here because I know a lot of you are very into choral music and sports riots)
• Canada
• Carthage
• Colombia (I've honestly always found the 'Gran' part to be redundant)
• Denmark
• Egypt
• England
• Ethiopia
• France (which is called Gaul by the Greeks, btw)
• Georgia (or Sakartvelo, since there a bunch of other Georgia's across the globe it sometimes gets confused with)
• Germany (reminder that the HRE is referred to as the German-Roman Empire in a bunch of different languages)
• Greece or Macedon, not both at the same time
• Han China (China is a big country with lots of different ethnicities, so let's maybe start off with only the ruling class ethnicity, so that e.g. Manchuria or Tibet can be added later with relatively less controversy)
• Hatti
• Haudenosuanne (more accurate name for the Iroquois nation)
• Hawai'i
• Hindustan (Roughly the same deal as with China; rename 'India' to 'Hindustan' and confine the city list to the area immediately surrounding and including Delhi, leaving Dravidian and other Indo-Aryan civs for another day)
• Hungary
• Hunnic Empire (This one is honestly on thin ice, since I could never find a name for which the Huns themselves would call their country, which unsurprising, given how the nation-state as a concept wouldn't exist until a millenium after they had all basically perished)
• Ireland (come on Gráinne Mhaul, Pirate Queen of Ireland! *crosses fingers*)
• Japan
• Java (most pre-colonial empires in Indonesia, most notably Majapahit, came specifically from this island)
• Kambuja
• Kongo
• Korea
• Lakota (or whatever other name better fits the entirety of the Sioux nation)
• Mali
• Maya civilization (honestly in the same position as the Huns, except they were allegedly never all that unified, but it would just feel 'wrong' to not include them)
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Nehiyaw (what the Cree call their own nation)
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Nubia (or Kush, honeslty, given how Nubia wasn't all that separate or distinct form Egypt)
• Persia
• Phoenicia
• Poland
• Portugal
• Rome
• Russia
• Scotland
• Scythia
• Shoshone
• Songhai
• Spain
• Sumer
• Sweden
• Tawantinsuyu (a more accurate name for the Inca empire)
• Thailand
• Turkey (always preferred this name over 'Ottoman Empire')
• United States (America is a continent)
• Ukraine
• Venice
• Vietnam
• Wallumapu (I've heard this be a more accurate name for the Mapuche nation)
• Zululand

This is obviously an incomplete and unfinished list. I would probably get rid of Byzantium and the Huns, in favour of Cherokee and Haiti. In general, I do feel there's a need for a collection of civs that can more evenly cover a True Start map, and just in general provide a more diverse representation.

That does bring me to another point: Sid Meier's Civilization is not about history unlike the board game, never has been. It has always been about nationalism. Therefore, when asking what civilizations to include, it might be good to take a look at what historical imageries all the different nationalist movements around the world are using, and more importantly, by which nationalist movements. For example, I've always seen Babylon as the game's equivalent of Iraq, since Iraqi nationalists tend to cling onto Babylonian imageries more than they do to the accomplishments of medieval Baghdad.

Even an extend list as this don't cover all civilizations of the world. But I want to point out some things in this list.
Is Canada and Australia civilizations? Or they are just British colonies overseas, if colonies can be civilizations, why not add French Guiana too?
Byzantium for me is one of the worst choice of this list, Byzantium is just the Rome empire who speaks greek, it is very well covered by Rome and Greece, we don't need a third civ for this propose, but this game almost all versions had the Byzantium empire, what make no sense.
About the strange names to represent well know civilizations as Wallumapu to Mapuche, Anahuac to Aztecs or Tawantisuyo to Incas. I think is a cool idea bring this name to this forum, but for a game who the players don't necessarily are nerds of history I think this will just bring confusing and miss understanding.
And most notable, I was missing in your list the Haiti. You put Hatti, who I never heard before, and forget the put Haiti, the first black republic of the world, the second free country of Americas and who never was in the game before and deserve a spot.

 

[Evie]

Henri, while I don't dispute that Canada is a colonial nation (that is a nation formed by overseas colonization), never, ever, ever call it "just a British colony". The whole point of Canada is that it's formed around a mix of two cultures from teo different colonies each with their own traditions and language (British English and French) - and the French colony is the oldest and more deeply rooted of the two. Culturally, America is closer to being "just a British colony" than Canada is.

And no, politically, Canada is not (and has not been in a long time) a colony.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

And most notable, I was missing in your list the Haiti. You put Hatti, who I never heard before, and forget the put Haiti, the first black republic of the world, the second free country of Americas and who never was in the game before and deserve a spot.

Hatti is another way to say the Hittites.

To answer the OP, a civilization is hard to correctly pin down what is and what isn't. Historically it was easier to define separate ones depending on political and cultural differences such as Ancient Egypt was a separate civilization from the ancient Greeks, and Persia etc.

Today the concept of civilization is feels more broad and covers larger regions like the idea of a "Western civilization" encompassing most of Europe, Australia, Canada and the U.S. Everything under the U.S.A.in the Americas is mainly part of a "Latin American civilization".

Now according to the Civilization franchise, what defines a civilization is quite easy. It's whatever they want to be playable. That has included nomadic steppe people such as Mongolia, Scythia and the Huns, post-colonial nations such as America, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Gran Colombia, and Native Americans/First Nations such as the Sioux, Iroquois, Shoshone and the Cree, irregardless of what a civilization is according to the official definition.

I don't think there is a problem including most of these as a civilization, in the game, as long as they still feel true to what they did historically. I'd much rather do that than having a singular Western civilization and singular Latin American civilization in game.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Even an extend list as this don't cover all civilizations of the world. But I want to point out some things in this list.
Is Canada and Australia civilizations? Or they are just British colonies overseas, if colonies can be civilizations, why not add French Guiana too?
Byzantium for me is one of the worst choice of this list, Byzantium is just the Rome empire who speaks greek, it is very well covered by Rome and Greece, we don't need a third civ for this propose, but this game almost all versions had the Byzantium empire, what make no sense.
About the strange names to represent well know civilizations as Wallumapu to Mapuche, Anahuac to Aztecs or Tawantisuyo to Incas. I think is a cool idea bring this name to this forum, but for a game who the players don't necessarily are nerds of history I think this will just bring confusing and miss understanding.
And most notable, I was missing in your list the Haiti. You put Hatti, who I never heard before, and forget the put Haiti, the first black republic of the world, the second free country of Americas and who never was in the game before and deserve a spot.

Yeah again, it's not really the list of 64 nations I feel need to take priority in a game about civilization. It's more like the 62 civs that have appeared in form or another in the series + Ireland & Ukraine because 64 is a nicer number. Also agree with you on Haiti; that'd be a very welcome addition

 

[Henri Christophe]

Henri, while I don't dispute that Canada is a colonial nation (that is a nation formed by overseas colonization), never, ever, ever call it "just a British colony". The whole point of Canada is that it's formed around a mix of two cultures from teo different colonies each with their own traditions and language (British English and French) - and the French colony is the oldest and more deeply rooted of the two. Culturally, America is closer to being "just a British colony" than Canada is.

And no, politically, Canada is not (and has not been in a long time) a colony.

I don't want to ofense you or any other Canadian, but since the moment of the queen of England still the head of state of countries as Canada and Australia, that mean these countries isn't exactly free.At least USA had an independence war and gain it's freedom with a republic. Meanwhile Canada and Australia are both monarchies lead by Elizabeth II.

About Quebec be more deeply rooted, that's I think is cool, I never understand why Quebecois people vote "no" in the last referendum about be an independent country. Would be nice to have more one latin american country in Americas.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

OP didn't mention one more very important source of arguments in this regard: "civilization" originally meaning not just any society or ethnic group, but one with a particular degree of high social complexity. To quote Wikipedia, because I am lazy,

Spoiler :

View attachment 637258

View attachment 637260

Now this is mere wikipedia, but the notion of "civilization" is fairly well established in historical sciences, and obviously central to this game series (good luck entirely handwaving it and saying it doesn't matter if it's literally in the name). And yet, it is very clear that we do get cultures which do not, in any way, classify under any definition of "civilization" bound to aforementioned notions - most notably several American Indian groups, Maori and Huns. The interesting turn of this situation was protest of some Cree chief over depiction of Cree in civ6 as land - grabbing, expansionist, resource - exploitng state. Interesting because Western people feel it is appropriate and morally correct move to depict Amerindian cultures as "just like us" to make up Western guilt over colonialism, but you can also perceive it not so positively, as molding those Amerindian tribal societies into European (Eurasian?) patterns of culture, development, history; ultimately turning them into something they have never been. And in the same time you simply can't avoid doing that and somehow make let's say tribal nomadic Comanche way of life capable of matching Roman Empire power levels if we are going for any plausibility; Comanche have to cease living like Comanche and start living like Neolithic Middle East for them to make any sense in a game like this.

This problem being so fiery is of course to a large degree result of scientific terminology attempting to objectively (?) judge social complexity being conflated with racist suprematist nomenclature since pretty much forever, with the notion of "civilized" people being framed superior, smarter, more human, more cultured (whatever that means) than "savage" people, which messes up everything, because it is increasingly uncomfortable to call pretty much any culture "not a civilization" due to its racist suggestions, and in the same time some sort of linguistic distinctions between different "tiers" of social organization are necessary. I also strongly suggest that any attempt to replace the word "civilization" with something else would end up similarly to this interesting linguistic phenomenon of each and every new "neutral, scientific, non offensive" term for people with below average IQ inevitably ending up as an insult and being replaced with next one ad infinitum.

Thereby, my post offers no answers, merely questions. Be my guest!

I feel like the first step in the right direction would be to simply question the depiction of exploitation and conquest as something good. Make efforts to provide examples of civilization growing advanced prosperous in an entirely peaceful and egalitarian manner, no matter how ahistoric that take would be. Heck, if anything, the more "historically accurate" a game tries to be, the more its fanbase tend be filled with... not exactly best kind of people...

Another factor to consider, is whether it was ever good idea to have the civs be represented by historical empires in the first place. Like, why couldn't the civs just have been generic, fictional factions (think red emripe, blue empire etc)? Then again, it's likely Sid didn't have in mind you would be playing as the US or Mongolia, but rather as Lincoln or Genghis Khan respectively. Again, I do wonder how much Firaxis considers just how ingrained nationalism has been into the game series DNA

 

[Miserable Old Git]

Simple answer to the question: There Is NO Answer.

 

[Evie]

Okay, bluntly put Henri, you're falling victim to a dumb American misconception.

Being the Queen of England gives you no special right or power in Canada. Only being Queen of Canada does. Queen of England and Queen of Canada are two completely separate titles, and the only country that has a say in who the Queen of Canada is, is Canada. We decide what our rules of succession are (including deciding, if we want, to follow the British line of succession), and we decide whether we recognize a person as the Queen of Canada or not.

Right now, we *chose*, *freely* to agree with a buncH of other countries on having the same ruler (currently, Elizabeth Windsor). But it's purely and exclusively our choice, and if the UK appointed a monarch we did not want, it would be purely and exclusively
our choice to appoint a different one. No other country has a legal say in the matter, though some may feel upset with us.

So no, we are not subject to another freaking country.

(Same largely goes for Austalia).