cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
^^, theLastOne36, my whole "there are so and so many" explanation was just there to place a highlight on one fact: just because there are so and so many noisy (polish/scottish/swedish) supporters doesn't mean it would be fair to add Poland/Scottland/Sweden and not other nations.
This whole thread is speculation on "which civs should be introduced". Well and nice, but all those speculations are based on different paradigmas, or most often prejudices. It doesn't make ANY sense to compare reasons for a civ vs another civ, if the category of those reasons are different.
"Poland should be in, because Poland-Lithuania has been an important nation for a few centuries".
"The Hallstatt-culture should be in, because they made such beautyfull pottery."
"Siam should be in, because south-east Asia is underrepresented compared to its population / importance of the SE Asian market."
You see? Three completely different categories of reasons.
#1 the "military-econo-political approach" reasons that a number of nations have been holding a place of econo-political importance during parts of human history. Thus they must be included in every era. Because, because, well we are the greatest nation anyway.
#2 the "cultural achievement and influence approach" reasons, that certain civs have been so important as culture givers, and cultural fundaments. ancient Egypt, Greece, China ... they all formed the modern cultures. By the same reasoning we should include even more fundamental cultures, as frex the afformentioned Hallstatt culture.
#3 the "real world market / fairness approach" reasons, that a) having a similar civ in will increase the sales numbers (speculative but sounds at least possible). b) that it makes sense to have a fair distribution of civs on an earth map (which is true ... for earth maps only). And c) that it is a question of political correctness / fairness to represent all current cultures somehow (and be it by way of a remote ancestor). Never mind that political correctness in and by itself is a highly questioned paradigma. ^^
I'm sure you'll find several more categories of reasons. Are they all equally valuable? How to distinguish those categories values? And which are realy used by Firaxis?
I'm fairly sure that an anglo-centric and also an euro-centric prejudice is part of the decision process. Not because the Firaxis guys are nationalistic morons, but because this prejudice is part of our (western) culture. Plus the main markets for Civ4 are to be found in this western culture. And thereby this prejudice is "ok".
Does it make sense to add even more prejudices to this established one? By frex stating things like "there are at least as many reasons to include Poland as for England/Spain"? I doubt it.
But until it is clear which categories of reasons are given what value, I can't deny even such (IMO) valueless reasons. If there are enough Poles that ail Firaxis "include Poland and we'll buy BtS" then this will have an impact (positive or negative).
OK, what was all this jabber-wabber about? I just ask people to think about the categories of their reasoning. Because this way you can much better give a number of reasons why and why not a certain civ should be in. And, being an hopeless optimist, maybe the reasons brought up here could influence Firaxis decision making on Civ5?
ladies and gentlemen, this gentleman here has made a very good point. let me add on this.
First, I think we should go attack the Firaxis HQ and threaten them to tell us how they choose the civs.
However, but more importantly, i think it is pointless arguing what civ is to be in or not, though i msut say it is quite fun and educational. i think what we can do is argue about what civs are to be in, not what civ (notice the "s"... wow, one letter makes all the difference). we all can almost unaninmously spit out a decently sized list of perhaps ten to twenty civs, that we all could agree should/would be in, because in my opinion, Firaxis' choices of civilizations are very random (though slightly Westerno-centric).
however, in the end, remember that Firaxis is all trying to do one thing half of us here try to do every day... put some bread on the table. ka-ching. so i think that marketing reasoning is probably the only real decider of civs we can all agree on.
...whatever.
) it's an empire, not just an ordinary country. There's a difference. I think Vietnam could make it some day though. @cbrxkhan 
We only have one North American civ! Pfft.
(just kidding, I'm not a psycho)
