Personal interest in the nine newcomers.

[EvenStranger]

Morocco, Assyria, Poland, and Zululand all seem pretty boss to me.

 

[Homusubi]

1. Venice
2. Morocco
3. Assyria
4. Zulu
5. Indonesia
6. Brazil
7. Poland
8. Portugal
9. Shoshone

 

[Galgus]

1. Brazil

Since I like high happiness games, Brazil might become my go to civ depending on the specifics: they have to compete with Persia in that tactic. I also like the Jungle theme.

Also hoping their UI will benefit from the policies that Trading Posts do, as it would be a tragedy for them to become outdated.

2. Venice

Venice seems intriguing and playing a one city challenge sounds fun, but my interest is entirely dependent on how strong the extra trade routes bonus will be.

3. Morocco

Sounds great for a desert empire, especially a peaceful one. I like civs tied to specific tiles.

4. Indonesia

Depending on how useful Spice Islanders, their UA, turns out to be, they could either be very fun or abysmal.

5. Poland

The only thing that interests me with them is the Ducal Stable due to my love of tile specific civs, but I'm not sure how useful it will be.

6. Portugal

I'd probably play Venice if I wanted to really focus on trade, but they could be an alternative. Sweet UI also.

7. Assyria

I'm not a warmonger, but if I ever felt like being one I'd pick them. The possibilities of Treasures of Ninevah are intriguing: I can envision beelining military tech and stealing anything else that is needed from others.

8. Shoshone

Only interesting in the very early game. As a Marathon mode player on Huge maps, this is a crippling flaw.

9. Zulu

Boring Warmonger civ. Will likely be a pain to play against.

 

[Merciorum]

The history of Industrial and Modern Poland is disasterous. An animated map of Europe will show Poland being destroyed and reconstituted several times. German and Russian occupation of Poland predates WW1, even. Poland's weakness also had a hand in German unification and nationalism in the 1800s.

That's not to say Poland was never important (even though modern Europe used it like a punching bag, and denying that is just silly). The problem isn't Poland, but what Poland represents. Poland's inclusion - and Portugal's and Venice's - marks a larger problem that is irritating to fans of world history. The developers choices seem to indicate there's little value in the world outside of Europe, and a long view of history shows that's miopic.

Of course modern Europe used it like a punching bag. The same can be said of Mongolia and many others. But before the 18th century, Poland was vitally important. Why kick out nations just because they did badly in the modern period?

Poland doesn't represent anything. The devs looked at the civs they could choose, saw some which were particularly worthy, and chose them. Venice is a bit of an eyebrow raiser, as is Sweden and the Huns, but that doesn't mean that there can be no more Euro civs just because there are a fair number already. And there is really no reason to denigrate Poland just because of the last 200 years, when it prospered and dominated Eastern Europe for about 400.

Incorrect. The title of biggest country in Europe (other than Russia) generally doesn't mean much on the global scale. At its maximum, which was only for two years when it took Moscow, it controlled 445,355 sq mi. For most of its history it controlled 314,673 sq mi.

Khmer Empire controlled an area of roughly 463,323 sq mi for its entire 650 year history. Kongo Empire, at its maximum extent in the early 1700s, controlled an area stretching from the Congo River to the Kwanza River and the Atlantic Ocean to the Kwango River. This is almost 600,000 sq mi.

I don't disagree with you about Sweden. I wouldn't have necessarily included Sweden either over many other places. Poland easily has as much right to be in as Sweden, although Sweden is more popularly known as a great power for whatever reason, but that shouldn't be a reason to ignore Poland in its favor.

Hmm, didn't know the top figures. But how does being the largest country in Europe not mean much? You may as well kick out most civs if regional achievements are that insignificant.

Sweden is better known as a great power because it is Western, wasn't repressed for 150 years of its recent history, and isn't popularly known to the West solely because of its recent problems.

 

[Navelgazer]

1. Portugal: I'm not at all Portugese in real life, but for some reason whenever they finally show up in Civ expansions I finally feel like I'm represented (I know that makes no sense. I don't care.) In this case, they also look awesome and tricksy and the Feitoria looks like it should be some fun.

2. Venice: The other side of the coin from Portugal, and a challenge besides just being fascinating.

3. Assyria: I'm not usually a warmonger but I'm going to have to try it now. Blowing off early wonders in favor of military production is going to take some getting used to, though.

4. Indonesia: Looks wonderfully weird. I almost always play naval maps anyway, so the UA is perfect for me. And if religions can spread through trade routes the Candi might be useful after all. The bizarre Kris Warrior is just gravy.

5. Morocco: Wasn't initially interested in it, but the art/flavor looks so wonderful, and getting a mini-Petra as a UI is too good to pass up.

6. Zulu: I think there's some fun to be had in zerg-rushing the Impi, and with the new promotions you can get, this will be like the tutorial war-civ.

7. Brazil: I'll know better where they go once I understand culture victories better, but for now I just know that I like the flavor, and that Pedro II has the best leader screen maybe ever.

8. Poland: Just not really interested, for whatever reason. Doesn't seem to lend itself to any one thing, which could be good, but makes them sort of nothing to me right now.

9. Shoshone: After the pathfinder does his thing I picture this being about the most boring civ imaginable, which is a shame, because they had a lot of interesting NA cultures to choose from (and could have done something really cool with Inuit.)

 

[iRule]

Where are you from then, Navelgazer?

I hereby declare you a fellow Portuguese. You are welcome

 

[LastSword]

Poland: ACTIVELY DISLIKE - European Civ that has existed for all of 100 years combined when it wasn't being taken over by someone else.

Sigh, 'Murica.


1. Assyria - unique; breaks the importance of science
2. Poland - not balanced; very weak UB, UU and strong UA, which probably will not be so amazing looking on some policy trees (exploration...)
3. Zulu - flawless; second Germany, where I will be able to go full ******ed barbarian
4. Morrocco - generic; UI saves this civ from being very weak
5. Portugal - good on paper;
6. Indonesia - not so bad; map-specific, unsynergystic
7. Shoshone - very weak; map-specific, weak design
8. Brazil - pointless; one victory condition, handicaped Persia
9. Venice - restricting; being allowed to purchase things in puppets is not really such a big deal

 

[Navelgazer]

iRule: I'm a Brooklynite with English, Irish, Welsh and German ancestry. As I said - it makes no sense at all.

 

[PhilBowles]

7. Morocco - I like the UA. Gold and especially culture is fun. The colour scheme is awful though and so is their UI unless I misread completely. A kasbah worked by a non petra city is like an unimproved plains tile next to a river in G&K.

Which is more valuable in the absence of gold from rivers in BNW, besides which it's better than working bare desert with any other improvement they have available. It's a fort replacement, so can be built on nearly any (desert) terrain type (presumably excluding oases), including flood plains and hills.

8. Assyria - I'm no warmonger. I like teching fast, so I would have no benefit from the UA.

As I understand it the steal tech ability works like espionage - and since the AI tech path tends not to be the optimal one for most human-played strategies, there are usually a few techs even the tech leader can grab.

Although "I play X, so won't benefit from Y" is a very rigid way of looking at things - if you play as Assyria you have a new option for becoming tech leader, and so can focus efforts you would have been putting into tech development into other things. Plus on higher difficulties (Immortal and Deity) it simply isn't possible to be tech leader in the earliest game stages whatever you do.

When I do go to war I usually do it a bit later, with x-bows or artillery. I'm afraid I will rarely use the siege tower. The UB seems OK, but wouldn't you rather put a GW in something that yield culture and tourism instead? Very unexciting.

Agree the UB feels a tacked-on ability to give Assyria an excuse to be in the expansion (since it has no other link to the new mechanics), although it's a pleasing (if bizarrely implemented) allusion to the Epic of Gilgamesh (real-life great work first found in the Assyrian Royal Library).

Excuse but: If I am capable of having a headstart at a policy tree for without doing anything, then I simply I am accumulating bonus at faster rate than any other. That means, I will potentially: Grown my cities faster than anyone else, have more gold, explore ancient sites faster, have more science and who knows what else. Nobody argued that the policies will be different than the rest of the players, however do you have a concept of what it means to open lets say rationalism 10-20 turns before anyone else? Without even having to invest in planning/buildings for it?And its not a single policy, its 7. Meaning a whole free tree of bonuses, civ-wide. 7 more policies = 7 more civ-wide bonuses without doing anything.

Yes, it means you win the game more quickly. But the key point is it doesn't change anything in the way you play; although finishing Rationalism earlier will obviously affect the techs you select, you'll still select techs among your optimal tech path. You don't have any novel decision-making, and that's what I'd say characterises a civ with truly free bonuses from one you have to work, even though the latter often look free.

As for the Shoshone: The scout is going to make his choices situational: But I already see mine: Faith, pop,pop,pop,pop,pop....ad infinity. Talking about making Boudicca semi-obsolete UA wise.
As to their city larger territory: Moar tiles to work and eliminates the "settle on the lux strategy' bonuses!

It was the larger territory I had in mind to begin with. You have more tiles to work, but no more people to work them - you still have to select the right ones to get the most use out of the UA (and if the right ones happen to be within the city radius you'd have had anyway, you get no bonus). I don't think "settling on the lux" is optimal anyway, but playing Shoshone doesn't change anything about it - you still need to tech to whatever you need to improve the lux, and so settling on luxes remains the only way to exploit new ones until you've done so.

Ruins are somewhat situational simply because you can't guarantee their distribution in the landscape, and a faith pop is a grand total of once in your scheme above - a quick pantheon is great, but won't get you a religion by itself. I also wouldn't be surprised if the final ability we see has the Maya restriction - you can only choose each ability once until you've run through the list.

Well actually does the social policy thingie, reflect anything on their history? Even remotely? Perhaps a citizen of that esteemed country can enlighten us and show us what we cant see.

It's meant as a way to represent the ideology mechanic in a UA, the name Solidarity referring to the most famous of the anti-Soviet socialist movements that arose in Cold War Europe and which was, indeed, Polish. There's nothing about social policies per se that screams "Poland!", but as a candidate for an "ideology civ" it's perhaps the most obvious candidate not already in the game (places like Vietnam and Cuba weren't notable for their own ideologies, since they adopted ideologies of one of the more major powers, only for their relevance to the ideology wars of more important states).

Hmm, didn't know the top figures. But how does being the largest country in Europe not mean much? You may as well kick out most civs if regional achievements are that insignificant.

He meant in geographical terms. Europe is the second smallest continent, and has a higher concentration of nations given its land area than any other (Europe has almost as many modern nations as Africa) - no individual nation comprises a particularly extensive land area compared with a moderately-sized African one or, because the continent is so vast, even most small Asian ones. Vietnam doesn't look like much on maps because of the projections used and the size of surrounding territories, but even that's almost half the size of France, the largest nation in Western Europe.

 

[local_hero]

PhilBowles

I've read your post and I think you make some good points which makes me reconsider Assyria. I'm not particularly skilled though, only playing King level. But I would probably get more use of their UA than I initially thought. I still wouldn't place them higher on my list though because of their UU and UB. But I realise that Assyria would probably be an ideal choice for me if I were to step it up a level! Very useful UA now that you make me think about it.

Regarding the Kasbah, I can't understand why I only thought about placing the Kasbah on ordinary desert tiles. On hills and flood plains it will be strong. I wonder what I prefer though, Kasbah or Polder. Still, do you think we might actually be so desperate for gold that we would work a plain desert Kasbah tile? I hope trade routes will make up for the loss of gold from rivers. Otherwise I would probably prefer to run a market specialist if it keeps +2 gold, and then the +2 science from the rationalism social policy.

 

[oddtail]

Tough choice, but I think it'll be like this for me:

1. Portugal - I love trade/Gold-based games, but I do not really have the patience to fiddle with City States most of the time, *and* I don't particularly like to build many cities. I also love seafaring civilizations as well as early-ish overseas exploration. Given that Portugal gets Gold bonuses for exploration, is overall a good trader, *and* can reap the benefits of CSes without befriending them, Portugal is my clear favourite. EDIT: plus, not including it earlier was ridiculous. Portugal was very important for most of its history. It should have been in the first expansion at the *latest*, in my opinion.

2. Zulu - this is partly nostalgia, and partly I think they will be a very strong militaristic Civ. I usually avoid playing a warmonger, but with Zulu I might actually have a lot of fun doing that.

3. Morocco - in my book, the second best thing to playing a Gold/exploration game is playing a diplomatic game. I also heavily favour multiplayer over single player games. Morocco, being able to easily defend *and* making it easy and profitable (for both parties) to trade with other players, seems particularly well-geared towards non-violent MP.

4. Poland - this is partly because I'm Polish and I have been waiting for Poland in Civ for five games . I also like the free policies. When focusing on production, I often build cities near Pasture-improved resources, so the improved Stable fits my playstyle as well. And the Hussar - well, pushing the enemy back may (as others have mentioned) not be very useful in most cases, but I feel it will be extremely helpful in defensive wars. The ones I tend to wage more often than wars of aggression. Poland is not higher on my list because while the abilities are both fun and fit my playstyle, they do not really seem all that powerful, frankly.

5-7 Shoshone / Brazil / Assyria - they all seem like a lot of fun, and I will probably play them at least semi-regularly.

8-9 Venice and Indonesia - Venice may be unique, but it doesn't work for me, feels a bit weird and somehow unappealing. The only fun thing about Indonesia is the special unit, and the "have as many religions as you can" ability seems iffy and I don't know how easy it will be to use. Overall, both of these are pretty meh. I'll play them once or twice, probably, but not much beyond that (unless they turn out to be surprisingly fun. Who knows?)

 

[Princeofnigeria]

The history of Industrial and Modern Poland is disasterous. An animated map of Europe will show Poland being destroyed and reconstituted several times. German and Russian occupation of Poland predates WW1, even. Poland's weakness also had a hand in German unification and nationalism in the 1800s.

That's not to say Poland was never important (even though modern Europe used it like a punching bag, and denying that is just silly). The problem isn't Poland, but what Poland represents. Poland's inclusion - and Portugal's and Venice's - marks a larger problem that is irritating to fans of world history. The developers choices seem to indicate there's little value in the world outside of Europe, and a long view of history shows that's miopic.

Yes, no other country in this game has been conquered several times. It's not like egypt was conquered by England, France, carthage, arabia, the ottomans, the nubians, the greeks, the Romans, the phoenicians, and the sea people. Nooooo....

 

[Hulking Lummox]

iRule: I'm a Brooklynite with English, Irish, Welsh and German ancestry. As I said - it makes no sense at all.

Hey, high five for sharing the exact same ancestry! Though my pal Finland has not made it into the game. Perhaps a Finland inspired power/death metal great musician though!!!

 

[pilot00]

How about being modern Europe`s first democracy? During the Renaissance, Poland the largest state within Western Christianity, was the most tolerant in Europe and had the most advanced citizen’s rights.
What about the Constitution of May 3, 1791? It was the first constitution of its type in Europe and the world's second oldest codified national constitution after the U.S. Constitution.
It`s represented by advanced social policies and Polish UA.

What about not been hostile / having a smart aleck altitude to someone who asked with genuine interest about a country that he didn't know its history and spend your time elaborating the facts you present instead of trying to raise ire?

 

[pilot00]

This. We didn't need 1/3 of the new Civs to be European right after Gods and Kings was almost entirely European. Almost half of the Civs in game now are European, and that's not counting Civs like America and Carthage, which might as well be European for cultural purposes.

Quite easily. All they had to do was not be Eurocentric.

But how can you ask this is the question? Ones POV and preferences are tied to ones culture and influence. Even if you don't try to do so actively it comes so subconsciously. Europeans/Westerners will be West-centric, Africans will be African-centric and so on.

Yes, no other country in this game has been conquered several times. It's not like egypt was conquered by England, France, carthage, arabia, the ottomans, the nubians, the greeks, the Romans, the phoenicians, and the sea people. Nooooo....

The conquest of the sea people was the most harsh one. Debating history on the internet especially on a forum not dedicated to this matter is an error I discovered recently. Most of the people will post what Wikipedia says without having an actual opinion/knowledge on the matter been discussed and will defend their 'knowledge' to the death. However distorted/erroneous that might be. So debating whats important in history by extension is a moot point IMHO.

Sea people rule BTW. I am also fan of the crab people (southpark reference)

 

[ldvhl]

But how can you ask this is the question? Ones POV and preferences are tied to ones culture and influence. Even if you don't try to do so actively it comes so subconsciously. Europeans/Westerners will be West-centric, Africans will be African-centric and so on.

By having a broad understanding of world history and civilization. Just having a base understanding of the statistics - that G&K was mainly European, and after BNW European civs will have a huge share of the total - should point out that there's a problem.

 

[CleverFool]

1. Brazil - They incorporate a number of new aspects from the expansion; I see playing them like Persia, where happiness is emphasized. They should play quite different than every other civ.
2. Morocco - Their UA, UI and UU all seem to have synergies, which is something I always prefer.
3. Venice - A very different take; I don't know if I will ultimately enjoy playing as them, but I do look forward to giving them a shot if nothing else.
4. Zulu - Because Shaka is fun, and I prefer to warmonger in the middle part of the game, where they should in theory shine. While nothing fancy, their special abilities overlap very well.
5. Portugal - On certain maps they could definitely excel. They might be a dark horse for me; I could definitely see them being at the top of my list once the game releases.
6. Assyria - A unique mechanic, but if I go the domination route I prefer attacking at a later era.
7. Poland - Not particularly unique or exciting, but they have solid abilities that should make for a decent experience.
8. Shoshone - I was hoping for a NA civ to be included, but only their pathfinder stands out. The rest of their advantages feel pretty "Meh."
9. Indonesia - I was quite excited for their inclusion, but I still don't grasp how their bonuses work together. None really stands out, and they leave me feeling uninspired/

 

[pilot00]

By having a broad understanding of world history and civilization. Just having a base understanding of the statistics - that G&K was mainly European, and after BNW European civs will have a huge share of the total - should point out that there's a problem.

I think you missed what I said, although perhaps I haven't phrased it with the right context. Apologies if this the question.

I agree that it is a problem, but what I was trying to say is that since the majority on the dev team are Europeans, their experiences and POV of history and peoples will be 'painted' in a certain hue. Thereby the inclusion of civs will be based on said 'painted' perspective.

 

[apocalypse105]

Poland because its so interesting country repelt europe from islamatic invasion suffered drasticly under the world war 2 but still had resistent and rebellion while the nazis where in the country. Not to mention the changing from ideologies between communisme / capitalisme

And as far as I remember the polish army still use the same Eagle

 

[Mr.Huggins]

1.Venice-Completely unique game-play, will make a ton of money and fits excellently in my new "go tall" movement.
2.Portugal-Very strong trading empire and I love the UI so I can take from city-states without all the diplomacy.
3.Poland-The winged hussar is my favorite UU in the game, and all those free social policies could actually be quite powerful. I like the idea of a defensive, somewhat isolated culture superpower with this one.
4.Shoshone-Actually, the new Shoshone UU maybe my favorite. It makes for a really strong early setup and can be quite powerful with free population, technologies, culture, pantheons, etc.
5.Assyria-I really like the idea behind this one, I'm just not a warmonger, might give me some motivation.
6.Morocco-Seems solid across the board, just nothing to really interest me.
7.Indonesia-Although I like the idea of a unique luxury resource to boost happiness and trade, I feel like it kinda goes against my new "go tall movement" and I don't like the Kris Swordsmen since its all random and can be negative as well.
8.Zulu-Just not a warmonger, and if I am it will be late game.
9.Brazil-I'm not really good at managing happiness, so happiness based Civs are not for me. And nothing to really interest me here.